One of the reasons folks (including us) trot out frequently in support of web work is that it’s good for the environment. The equation is pretty simple: if you telecommute, you’re not tearing up the highways and burning petroleum-based fuels to the detriment of the atmosphere. As an added bonus, your employer can build fewer cubicles and parking lots, lowering their load on the planet.
But as Geoff Livingston points out, these days the bar for being green is going up. As Geoff says”green claims must be backed with supporting actions” to have people take you seriously. And that opens the question: what else can web workers do to be green?
I don’t claim to have all the answers, but there are a few areas that seem to be obvious candidates for a web worker focus. Energy consumption is one: if we swap cars for more computers, our carbon footprint doesn’t go down as much as it might. We’ve looked at cutting down on vampire power as a way to attack this in the past. Virtual machines can also offer computer – and power – savings.
The other area where web workers seem well-placed to offer leadership in green business is in cutting down on business travel. While we’ve discussed the benefits of attending conferences in the past, flying hundreds of people around the country (or the world) for a weekend certainly has an impact. Even a meeting with clients in the next city may put half a dozen team members in individual cars. Between videoconferencing, social networks, instant messaging, and email, we have the tools to eliminate most of these in-person meetings. Whether your corporate culture – or your clients’ – will tolerate doing business without face-to-face meetings is another question, but over the long run, I suspect more and more companies will make a virtue of operating virtually.
Of course, you’ll find lots of exciting, high-tech ways to help save the planet over at our sister site Earth2Tech. If you’re searching for help in finding the technology that will combat climate change, they’ve got all the pointers you’ll ever need. As web workers, we should be poised to effectively implement some of these technologies in the workplace.
Are you concerned with being green in your own web working life? What steps do you take in pursuit of that goal?
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