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greener-conversations.md

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Greener Conversations

When we talk about the importance of environmental sustainability, saving the planet is probably the first thing that comes to most people’s minds. But not everyone wants to be Superman and our average person cannot think beyond their everyday problems. But what if everyone realizes that they can make a difference and that they can save the planet? What kind of conversations should we be having to help people understand that climate change is something that they can tackle alongside their everyday problems? That addressing environmental sustainability is not just the socially responsible thing to do but the best thing to do (to address your everyday problems).

So what do an organization's everyday problems look like?

  • Growing revenue Make more money (brand image, more customers, more awareness, PR, doing the next coolest thing, empower customers to do more to also contribute)
  • Reducing spend (cutting out unnecessary costs) using energy only when needed
    • Optimizing operations (getting more out of what you invest)
    • Increasing efficiency (get something done faster)
  • Hiring good people

Growing revenue

Organizations are always looking for ways to make more money. An organization’s main source of revenue is from its customers so maintaining a good relationship with its customers is vital. Some common questions an organization will continuously ask itself is, how do we keep our existing customers while getting more customers? Or how do we ensure we are conveying the right message to the public? This is where environmental sustainability can come into play as it is a matter we all should care about. Therefore an organization that cares about environmental sustainability and takes necessary actions can improve its brand image. At this day in age, there is an ever increasing amount of organization that have jumped on the environmental sustainability band wagon, so if you still haven’t thought about environmental sustainability yet, you are already behind your competition. Customers want to do the right thing and if the products or services you sell to them empower them to do so, in this case to save our planet, the more likely they will want to spend their money on your organization.

Reducing spend

There are many ways to reduce spend in your operations and a great way to do this is through thinking of it through the lens of environmental sustainability. Why? Because simply put, environmental sustainability can translate to using less resources to do the same thing, or even doing more. So when we look at our IT operations, we should look at where can we do less and where we can optimize. This can include ensuring we are fully utilizing IT resources (i.e. not having any idle servers sitting around) or running some of our IT resources on renewable energy (i.e. leveraging data centers in different regions that may use more renewables and produce less carbon emissions). For optimization, we can look at the energy efficiency of our IT resources such as ensuring the algorithms used in our applications are running in the most efficient way or how optimal our architecture is designed so that our applications use less energy but do what we want them to do or even more.

Hiring good people

In order to attract good talent, an organization must evaluate their culture and ensure it endorses high integrety and doing the right thing. Environmental sustainability is one of our society's top global challenges that has been adopted by the UN as one of its 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). Therefore our responsiblity as an individual, organization, and society, to address global climate change is undeniable. Attracting good talent means convincing good people who do the right thing to want to invest their time and skills in your organization because your organization reflects their values. Incorporating environmental sustainability into your organization's operations and cultural backbone is paramount to establishing your organization as an advocate for addressing global climate change.