Google: My Champion | Current Sustainability Management Leaders | Dylan Burkley |

When it comes to leaders in sustainability, I cannot think of anyone who has done more for their company and society then my champion, Google. Whether it be their data centers that use fifty percent less energy than other corporations on average or the fact that they have been carbon neutral since 2007, Googlers not only lead the pack in sustainability, but share their knowledge with society and other companies as well. Google is a search engine first and foremost, but they also provide other internet services such as web browsing (Google Chrome), and e-mail (Gmail). They also provide a variety of tools to help businesses succeed on and off the web and build products that make the web better and faster, such as Android and Chrome. One thing that has not changed since Google’s first appearance on the internet scene is the possibilities of the web itself. Google was founded in 1998 by two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin and was initially a search engine named “Backrub” of all things. They are headquartered in Mountain View, California, this is known as “the Googleplex”, but they have 70 offices total in more than 40 countries around the world and over 40,000 employees worldwide. To have a company as large as Google does and to be carbon neutral is extremely impressive to me and made me want to know more, so that is why I chose Google as my champion. I was not able to find a written definition of sustainability from Google, but after in depth research I have come to the conclusion that maybe it is more in the actions of these “Googlers” which does not really require a textbook definition. For instance, the bike-to-work program they have, it rewards Googlers for biking to work or riding one of their numerous shuttle vans and therefore reduces their carbon footprint from employee transportation. Forty-five percent of Google employees actually use this program which saves them about five thousand four hundred tons of carbon dioxide each year. Along with biking and carpooling, they also have electric vehicle charging stations on most sites and some employees at their Seattle campus even kayak to work! I am not certain on an exact date when Google first started using sustainability programs, but I would not be surprised to learn of programs that existed from the very start of the company. I can say 2007 was definitely a big year for Google sustainably, it is the year they first became carbon neutral and they also started to repurpose their old servers that year which has thus far saved them from buying over three hundred thousand replacement machines. Not surprisingly, Google was the first internet company to gain external certification for their high environmental and energy standards including; ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001, and ISO 50001 certifications. They have also built or converted most of their buildings into green buildings, they have over four million square feet of building space that has achieved LEED certification status, of which almost all are at least LEED gold certified and many LEED platinum. Google is constantly experimenting to find new ways to improve their work environment, for example, flushing out on-campus toilets with recycled municipal water. They also implemented the first solar hot water installation in the United States into their facilities and only use all natural carpets with no toxic materials. In fact, every time a new product is bought for use in Google facilities, they send a questionnaire to that manufacturer asking them exactly what is in the new product. Just about everything done at Google is done sustainably; they really try to live healthy and sustainably all around their company. I will start with the example of them greening their power, this is one area where Google was not always energy conscious but through wind and solar programs are vastly improving. Around 2010 they started buying more and more electricity directly from wind farms near their data centers and by 2013 thirty-five percent of their energy was from renewable energy like solar or wind, they are also continually installing solar panels on roofs of their buildings. Their headquarters in Mountain View has already installed 1.9 MW of solar panels which produce over three million kilowatt-hours of clean energy. One thing about Google that should be emulated by other companies is their data centers. Their data centers are some of the most effective in the world and use on average only fifty percent of the energy of most other data centers. Google uses less than 0.01 percent of the world’s electricity which is pretty impressive for a company of their size! In addition to reducing their impact on the environment, their data center designs have saved them over one billion dollars to date. Some other reasons their data centers are so effective is because they use something call power usage effectiveness (PUE) that includes things like; managing the air flow, adjust thermostats, and utilizing free cooling to optimize power distribution. These data centers are actually the main reason why Google was the first major internet services company to gain external certification of their high environmental and energy management standards, which have been briefly mentioned already. Indeed most of Google’s sustainable projects could and should be emulated, one thing that is interesting about Google that I know many other companies do as well is they let employees come up with their own sustainability initiatives. Most of their on-campus green initiatives in fact were started by their employees, “Googlers”, and grew into companywide efforts. An example of this would be Google gardens, these are on-campus plots that employees can reserve to plant and harvest any food they like and when it is ready, they can take it home to enjoy. While we are on the subject of organic, sustainable food; I would be remiss if I forgot to mention Google Cafes, which do everything possible to buy local organics and sustainable food from farms and fisheries. Globally, Google chefs feed in excess of forty thousand people per day. Thirty percent of the cafes sales go directly to small farmers and sixty percent support small farmers; they have also adopted composting for their waste. Google cafes recycle twenty percent of their waste, the rest is composted. As I mentioned local fisheries are also put into use for their cafes and not only that, every Friday these fisheries deliver local fish for employees to purchase and take home. Google really does go above and beyond when it comes for making a better environment and not just for them but for everybody. They have been carbon neutral since 2007 which means basically; with all things considered their total carbon output is at zero. How is this possible for such a large corporation you may ask? Well for every bit of carbon Google cannot save with their own green initiatives, they purchase carbon offsets. With these carbon offsets their total climate impact ends up being zero and because carbon offsets can vary a lot, Google only buys those of the highest quality, creating a lasting impact on the environment. They do this by looking at every aspect of these projects to assure they are confident the production is real and it is also verified by a third party to ensure credibility. An example of this would be St. Landry Landfill where carbon offsets were purchased by Google because of its close proximity to their data centers. At St. Landry, there landfill produces carbon and methane, but they have come up with a system of burning the methane which turns it into carbon dioxide which is less harmful and this creates the carbon offsets purchased by Google. To put a carbon neutral Google into perspective, I will use the example of an active Google user who does twenty-five searches and watches sixty minutes of YouTube a day, has a Gmail account and uses other services. Google emits about eight grams of CO2 a day to serve that user, a month of that type of use is equal to driving a car approximately one mile, but once they offset their carbon footprint to zero, it is like not driving a car at all. Other Google products enable their users to save energy themselves too, like using Google maps to travel greener or “the cloud”, where approximately eighty businesses could be hosted for the energy one small business would use to host its email locally. Thus, the annual carbon footprint of a Gmail user is up to eighty times smaller than that of an email user at a business using locally-hosted email servers. Yes, Google’s projects are enough to put a smile on the face of any environmentally conscious consumer, but what does their future hold? Well, for one thing, they have been carbon neutral for nearly ten years and the next step is beyond carbon neutral. They are making more and more agreements for funding renewable energy projects, creating far more energy for the world and growing their industry as a whole. To date, they have made agreements to fund over two billion dollars in clean energy wind and solar projects. To put this in perspective, that is enough electricity to power five hundred thousand homes for a year, or all of the public elementary schools in New York, Oregon, and Wyoming, or for a car to travel around the world two hundred thousand times. Some of the companies Google invests in include; SolarCity, Balko Wind Farm, and the Jasper Power Project just to name a few. In conclusion, my champion, Google has worked extremely hard to minimize the environmental impact of their services. Not only are they a relaxed company to work for, sustainability is in every aspect of their work, from their bike-to-work program, to the power usage effectiveness of their data centers, to building and eating sustainably; Googlers may be among some of the most eco-friendly people in America. Any other internet-based company would be wise to emulate them, which many of them already are. This is why, when it comes to sustainability, my champion is Google.
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Works Cited

Kleiner, K. (n.d.). The corporate race to cut carbon. Retrieved April 2015, from www.nature.com: http://www.nature.com/climate/2007/0708/full/climate.2007.31.html

www.google.com/green. (n.d.). Retrieved April 2015, from Google: www.google.com/green