Although I am part of the web 2.0 startup circus, I have never really come across a discussion on the ethical implications of business. In Germany, there has been B.A.U.M (German Environmental Management Association) for a long time, but not sure where this has made an impact on startups.
Of course, in a startup, you are first and foremost concerned with a very different sustainability: financial sustainability.
But on the way, why not do a quick check. Here is my take on Qype, my company.
I. The good
Our product
Qype enables people to discover what is good in their area, and to connect with people who share similar interests. We do not ship anything, we do not require that you upgrade your hardware every year. it is a service, not a product, therefore we consider ourselves lucky in this aspect. Furthermore, you could say that we do not need to create articifal demand for our service, that we potentially could reduce the need to travel as Qype is a great help to navigate your environment. And, hopefully, we do our share help the local community to reconnect.
Location and style of our office:
We are located in walking distance to Jungfernstieg in Hamburg, which is the cities main hub for public transport. We deliberately chose an office in an old office, which stays cool in the summer without any form of air conditioning. This may mean a bit less insulated in the winter, but I am not even sure about that.
II. Some things we can influence:
- We now separate paper in our office from the rest of our rubbish
- In process of switching our electricity provider to a green provider
- In our kitchen, we changed the lightbulbs to energy saving ones
- Our fruit (Bananas, the staple for web development) is now being bought from the organic corner of the super market. Drinks have always come in return bottles, which is no special achievement in Germany.
- We will probably switch our coffee to fair trade, but I still need to ask our local provider about it. At least, providing our own cappucino to our people dramatically reduces the need for paper cups from Coffee shops.
- Standby Power: This is still an issue with all of us, but maybe blogging about it helps.
- Office lighting. I need to publish some fotos of this. Here we have the classic dilemma: We have very ugly neon lamps on the ceiling and in an attempt to improve this, we bought uplights last year, which obviously consume much more energy and I suspect the dimmers do so as well. At least we changed the light bulbs in our kitchen to energy saving ones.
III. The ugly
Air Travel
Trying to establish a website with a European footprint, our biggest eco-sin is travel. Air travel between London and Hamburg, mostly. When you want to recruit people and set up business relationships, there is no other way.
Also, our specialist for web concept and design travels from Munich every week.
In both cases, we are trying to reduce air miles by extending the lenght of stay and reducing the frequency.
Our investors insist on monthly board meetings. Having had very frustrating attempts in phone conferences this will to remain issue.
Does any one know of a decent and affordable web based video conference solution? – Should be able to handle 5 participants.
Tags: green
Good stuff to hear, mostly.
But: Sustainability is a very complex subject and some thigs are larger than they appear in the rear mirror:
Buying organic fruit and fair trade coffee is good, no doubt. But let’s consider organic bananas: While the eco balance of *growing* bananas oganic will be much better than doin’ it conventionally, most of the effect is eaten by the terrible transport eco effects.
Additionally, buying organic stuff in super markets will give you the most un-organic variants available (note that there are quite a few different standards for organic food and super markets normally go for the very low EU standards to make for lower prices)
If you are going for sustainability, you really have to look out for stuff thats growing as near as possible. (that rules out Apples and Oranges from Israel, for example)
Mind you: Buying organic stuff is good, no doubt: It’s definitely healthier and most of the time also gives more money to the producers, so it’s more fair. It just isn’t very effectively reducing your sustainablity footprint.
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Gute Gedanken, wir (WBN) machen uns die auch, es gibt einen Code of Energy Conduct. Ich werde den bei Gelegenheit mal posten. Video-Tool: iChat unter Leopard, Go-to-meeting für Windows
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About the coffee issue. I was amazed to see that all employees at SAP’s headquarters drink fair trade coffee. If SAP can do this, Qype should be able to do so too
Video conferencing: mebeam.com does a fairly good job, although it doesn’t have special vconf features. There’s also another whose name I forgot, which comes with collaboration tools. When I find it again, I’ll tweet you.
don’t tweet. mail. 🙂
Looks like your question thing at the end of the post worked. Also not having to sign in is nice too. Good job. Nice list. Thanks.