Being a web and mobile software company you might not think there’s a whole lot we can do to reduce our impact on the environment. Considering that we do not have factories that produce goods, and we have no need to ship products around the world so there is no fleet of thousands of trucks to make more efficient. But, on the contrary, there’s a plethora of things we can do and are doing to reduce our impact.
In a company such as ours where enforcing something as concrete as changing all truck routes to have as many right turns as possible (kudos to the dude at UPS that came up with that one) isn’t an option, our solutions stem from a more cultural stand point, such as turning off computers at night or over the weekend, recycling paper, and printing double sided. All of which are difficult to enforce and measure.
Building a culture of employees that are concerned about the company’s impact on the environment is not an easy task. To provoke interest and encourage critical thinking on the topic we send out a monthly update on our energy use that includes some analysis on the amount of energy used per employee and other green tips. Though the main focus is on culture, there are a few very tangible things we have done.
For one, we installed programmable thermostats throughout the building, which most probably contributed to a reduction in our energy use in the 2009-2010 winter season by nearly 50% of what is was in 2008-2009. We also have indoor bike racks, lockers, a lunch delivery program, and we recently switched from bottles of beer to kegs (w00t!). All of these things not only reduce our impact on the environment, whether directly or indirectly, but also either saves the company money or increases morale (in the case of the kegs I would say it does both).
There are definitely more things we can do, but we’re doing what we can and allowing the culture to grow organically (See what I did there?). Happy Earth Day from all of us here at The Nerdery.
