Arbor. “You can also rent out a smaller office space, which allows you to spend less on lighting, office equipment, and heating/cooling costs. “As a result, your employees won’t be driving into work, which decreases the amount of greenhouse emissions released into the atmosphere. You can also go paperless, which has another eco-friendly benefit. “Also, if employees are working from home, they’re eating from home, which means less plastic consumption. These are just a few of the myriad benefits that transitioning to a remote work setting can have on the environment.”
process, even if this means reinventing the whole idea. It’s the difference between spending millions of dollars to develop a pen that can write in zero gravity versus handing out pencils. “As an example, I know of a man who built a near-zero energy home in the cold Colorado Rockies all the way back in 1984. He funded the energy improvements by leaving out old- fashioned irrelevant systems like a furnace. His house stays warm and comfortable enough to grow bananas inside, so why would he need a furnace.” “What gets measured gets changed,” said Michelle Li, founder & CEO of Clever Carbon. “If businesses have budgets to measure their emissions that would be the best place to start. Otherwise, companies should aim to reduce energy usage in their office, buildings and manufacturing operations, as well as their fuel consumption if they have a fleet of vehicles. “Where reduction is difficult, companies can look to vendors that use renewable energy. “Education of employees is critical because employees can help find creative ways to reduce consumption and look for more planet-friendly vendors.” Knowledge is Power These practices are all well and good but knowing what to cut down on and what to scale up is a different issue. In a technology landscape dominated by AI, data is clearly the most important aspect of any situation. It stands to reason then that the answer to this climate change conundrum also lies in the analysis of data. Khavronenko said that one of the key problems with tackling climate change is the question of “how environmental change works when the businesses are being told they need to continue growing? “More data requires more processing power, which increases the impact on the environment. By gaining a deep understanding of how data flows within a business, and what data is essential, you can start making changes to ensure energy efficiency. Simply put, less storage, less RAM usage and less CPU usage equals less carbon footprint.
Mike Cameron founder
smoko.com
Where reduction is difficult, companies can look to
vendors that use renewable energy
Smarter Consumption Working from home may well be the start of a more efficient future for businesses. However, the work can’t stop there. According to Shel Horowitz, Green Business and Marketing Strategist at GreenAndProfitable.com, to get the best results, cutting emissions needs to be a part of all business decisions. When a business successfully addresses climate change and other environmental and social crises, the solution is bespoke. It will be different in every situation. Still, certain principles hold true in defining and determining that solution. “Specifically, reduction of energy, raw materials, waste, but also holistic thinking that looks at the problem to be solved, rather than how to plug a partial solution onto an existing
Roman Khavronenko co-founder
victoriametrics. com
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ucadvanced.com
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