Today we’re excited to announce that LunarLab is officially carbon neutral!

As a public benefit corporation, sustainability is incredibly important to us. We also know that all businesses, regardless of their size, have some environmental impact. Even though our business isn’t a major source of pollution, we still wanted to take responsibility for the impact we have on our environment.

Read on to learn what it means to be carbon neutral, how we achieved it, and how we think about sustainability in the tech industry.

What does it mean to be Carbon Neutral?

We all have a carbon footprint, which is the amount of greenhouse gasses (like carbon) that are generated by the actions we take. Individuals have a carbon footprint, but so do businesses like ours. Becoming carbon neutral means that you are balancing the amount of carbon you generate with the amount of carbon that you remove from the environment.

Of course, this doesn’t mean literally removing the carbon. Unfortunately, there are currently no artificial ways of removing carbon directly from the atmosphere. Instead, we have to take steps to balance the amount of carbon we generate. For individuals, think about things like adding solar panels to your home, line drying your clothes, cutting consumption of carbon-intensive products, or planting trees.

Businesses can also reduce their carbon footprint. At LunarLab, we worked with a nonprofit called We Are Neutral to calculate our carbon footprint, and contribute to projects that offset that footprint. Some of the projects include native tree plantings, energy upgrades, landfill gas capture, and more.

How do tech companies have an environmental impact?

It might be surprising to hear that tech companies can have an environmental impact. I mean, so much of what we do is in the cloud and online, right? But just like any other business, tech companies also have an environmental impact. Sure, tech companies aren’t necessarily creating a new Pacific Garbage Patch or doing tons of deep water oil fracking… but the impact is there.

Some ways that tech companies impact the environment are just normal parts of doing business:

• Travel – whether it’s cars, planes, or public transit, many types of travel generate greenhouse gasses.
• Electricity & utility usage
• Waste generation – Plastic coffee cups, old pens, scrap paper… it all becomes waste
• Hazardous waste – Those laptops don’t last forever! And when they get tossed out, they often end up in landfills. This can result in the leaching of harmful substances like mercury, lead, and cadmium into the soil and water.

But there are also some not-so-obvious ways that tech companies have an impact:

• Energy consumption from devices – Spending all day on our laptops doesn’t just zap our energy… it also consumes a large amount of energy on a global scale.
• Data center energy consumption – All that data living in the cloud is sitting in a data center somewhere. Those data centers use a huge amount of electricity much of which is generated from fossil fuels. Cooling the servers in the data centers is also a major source of energy usage.
• Software Design – Even though it doesn’t have a physical footprint, way software itself is created can also have a major impact. When products are not coded efficiently, they can have longer processing times which leads to more energy usage. When they are designed so poorly that people have to stay in the product longer or click more often, this also increases the energy usage.
• Resource extraction & chemical waste – When physical hardware is created for tech companies, the production of those materials often requires minerals that must be mined from the Earth. The mining process can lead to deforestation, habitat destruction, pollution, and even illegal mining in conflict zones. Additionally, the mining process consumes significant amounts of water and energy, and produces chemical waste that is often not properly managed.
• Transport & packaging – When hardware is shipped around the world, transportation contributes to carbon emissions. Additionally, packing can be very harmful: it is often made of plastics or other materials that aren’t biodegradable. This leads to more waste in landfills.

How can tech companies address sustainability?

Ok, so we’ve established that even tech companies can have a negative environmental impact. Whether that impact is big or small, everyone can take part in becoming a more sustainable company. Here are some of the ways your company can start thinking about decreasing your environmental impact.

Remember, every little bit helps! Your environmental action plan doesn’t have to happen overnight or be perfect on Day 1. Every action matters.

Consider your environmental impact:

As they say, the first step is admitting you have a problem. Spend some time thinking about how your company’s environmental impact, and how you can start approaching sustainability. How much waste are you generating? Do you travel frequently? Are you using a lot of resources? Sitting down and thinking things through can help you decide where to focus your efforts.

Cut your tech energy usage:

As mentioned above, just because your data is online doesn’t mean it’s not contributing to your carbon footprint.

Optimizing your software’s performance can reduce unnecessary processing power and energy usage. The Green Web Foundation offers a Green Web Check tool to help you determine if your website runs on green energy, and the Website Carbon Calculator can help you understand your website’s carbon usage (plus remediation steps).

Improving your user experience can also help you to cut emissions. When users have fewer clicks to get what they need and can achieve their goals faster, they have shorter device usage times which leads to lower energy consumption. This may seem minor on an individual level, but collectively it can amount to significant energy savings.

If you can, upgrade to more energy-efficient servers, computers, and other hardware. If you are using data centers, find out what type of energy they use and considering shifting to 100% renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, or hydropower. Virtualization technologies can allow one server to run multiple virtual machines, reducing the need for physical hardware. This cuts down on energy consumption and physical waste.

Sustainability initiatives:

Most companies would benefit from investing in sustainability initiatives. These can be as big or as small as they need to be to make sense for your company. You may want to consider implementing a recycling program, making sure everyone turns off the lights at the end of the day, or installing energy-efficient appliances in your office. Implementing a hazardous waste disposal program is a great way to ensure that your laptops and smart phones don’t end up in landfills at the end of their life.

Reduce consumption:

Think about your office supplies. What are you using that could be more environmentally friendly? Consider switching from non-biodegradable packaging and office materials to something that can be recycled. Companies like Dolphin Blue have plenty of sustainably sourced and recycled products for everything you need at company office or even employees’ home offices.

Most tech companies are already paperless, but encouraging digital communication can be a great way to reduce paper usage. When printing is absolutely necessary, employees should practice eco-friendly printing practices and recycle materials whenever possible.

Virtual meetings and telecommuting are a great way to conserve energy because they reduce the need for travel and associated emissions. If you’re already working remotely, you can take it a step further by turning off your camera. Research shows that turning off your camera during video calls can reduce your environmental impact by 96%!

Carbon offsetting:

Some companies (like LunarLab) choose to go the carbon offset route. Nonprofits like We Are Neutral and companies like Ecolytics make the process easy by helping you to calculate your actual carbon footprint based on your company’s various activities. Carbon offsetting organizations can help you to find projects to contribute to that will balance your carbon usage.

How does LunarLab address environmental impact?

Our company is relatively small compared to economic giants. We don’t have a huge environmental impact, but we do take sustainability efforts seriously.

The first step we put in place was to create company policies around sustainability efforts. We’re designers, not chemists… but we still created a hazardous waste disposal policy that encompasses all of the physical hardware products we use daily. When our laptops wear out from our intense Figma usage, we recycle them or donate them to schools to increase their lifespans. We also have policies in place governing our office stewardship: we are paperless when possible, we work to be energy efficient, we prioritize working with local vendors to save on shipping & travel cots, and we work to ensure we are buying green office materials whenever we can.

As a remote-first company, we aren’t doing a ton of travel. But when we do travel, we work to carpool or use energy efficient methods of transportation. We also work to reduce travel by scheduling virtual meetings as much as possible. As mentioned above, turning off cameras during Zoom calls can conserve energy… but I have to admit, we didn’t need much convincing to turn off our cameras once in a while.

By working with We Are Neutral, we found out that our company’s carbon footprint is roughly 2.57 metric tons annually. We have contributed to sustainability projects equivalent to our energy usage. Offsetting 2.57 metric tons of CO2e per year is equivalent to:

• taking .57 vehicles off the road for one year
• switching 97.40 incandescent bulbs to LEDs
• growing 42.5 tree saplings for ten years

It’s small, but we’re proud to do our part for the environment.