Being a progressive company is not only about the tools and services provided, but their ecological, social, and economic impact as well. We recently discussed this wide topic of business sustainability with our co-founder and National Councillor for the Swiss Green Party Gerhard Andrey and Leah Goldfarb, Environmental Impact Officer at Platform.sh, a leading Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) with greener hosting options and partner of Liip.

When we first talked about doing a joint webinar on the topic with these two sustainable development experts, it quickly became clear that the themes exchanged would go beyond the technical aspects of greener hosting. Gerhard and Leah hadn’t met before, but they both shared the same global perspective.

First, the two experts introduced their sustainability journey coming from two different backgrounds and upbringings (the links redirect you to the part of the video where the topic is introduced).

During the webinar, Leah and Gerhard exchanged views on the global ICT carbon footprint trends. There are efforts to reduce emissions and use technology to support sustainable development. But at the same time, there’s an “always more” mentality in IT that’s an issue. An assumption that you always need the newest services or tools, meaning more energy consumption, not to mention hardware.

As a company, there are different ways to improve ways of working, not only by reducing CO2 emissions but also by improving commuting or life-work balance. For a multicloud PaaS such as Platform.sh, ⅔ of the carbon emissions are cloud-related. There are three areas of CO2 reduction: optimize your website/app/code, reduce the number of servers, and choose greener hosting locations. The last part is crucial as the international difference in carbon intensity is significant.

The discussion also covered vital topics such as regulation, impact accounting, and assessing external impacts (client projects)--not only internal ones as digital service providers.

This live webinar opened the floor to the the audience to ask their questions, with many touching on the role of governments, smart regulation, client selection, innovative digital ways to drive positive ecological impact, and social responsibility.

Don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about this webinar. And you can visit our sustainability page for more on the topic.