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Microsoft Green announcements

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Global Warming
Photo Credit frankfarm

Microsoft have been doing some work at a corporate level in an attempt to Green the company. According to this announcement (nasty pdf warning!), Microsoft’s foodservice at its Redmond campus has become the first corporate campus in the United States to meet the Green Restaurant Association’s Certified Green Restaurant™ standards.

I must admit I hadn’t heard of the Green Restaurant Association until I read this release and was pleasantly surprised to find that they have a search function on their site which allows you to find certified Green restaurants in your area (if you live in the US). I’m not aware of any equivalent European organisation 🙁

To achieve the Certified Green Restaurant status Microsoft is:

replacing plastic and Styrofoam™ cups, plates and eating utensils with biodegradable cafeteria and kitchen accessories; expanding its full-scale recycling program; and implementing a waste composting program. Microsoft is sending all of its kitchen scraps and compostable items to Cedar Grove Composting of Seattle and has reduced waste in its kitchens by 50 percent since the inception of the compostable program

Microsoft is even sending its 833 gallons of used fryer oil to biodiesel refineries every month for recycling into biodiesel fuel.

To keep this certification, Microsoft needs to implement four new environmental steps per year for the next five years. To that end, from the Microsoft blog entry about this

Microsoft and the GRA have identified the following improvements for 2009.

  • Sustainable Food: Increase organic and sustainable seafood offerings, to reach a goal of 30% of the menu.
  • Water Conservation: Install low flow aerators for hand washing and kitchen sinks, and install low flow pre-rinse spray valves on all kitchen sinks.
  • Waste Reduction: System of warewashing chemicals that results in less packaging and chemical waste.

Kudos to Microsoft for this achievement.

Microsoft also recently released a free power management tool for computers called Edison in conjunction with Verdiem. Edison allows you to simply set your computer to go to low power mode after a period of inactivity which you can set. You can also create schedules based around your working day and have Edison’s settings vary according to your work hours. Finally, Edison reports the amount of power you have saved.

This all sounds nice but as Edison is PC only and my computer is a Mac, I can’t comment on how effective it is. In fairness to Microsoft, Edison is Verdiem’s software and Verdiem appear to have decided not to support the Mac – however, it is unfortunate that Microsoft chose to partner with Verdiem and not someone like Bigfix which has power management software for Mac and PC .

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Microsoft and EEA deal starting to pay off

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EyeOnEarth

James has written previously about how Microsoft and the European Environmental Agency (EEA) signed a non-exclusive five year deal with a goal to “make environmental information more accessible to citizens in Europe”.

As James said at the time:

Likesay, this is pretty much a canonical Greenmonk story. We are all watchdogs, we are all observers. Science progresses most effectively when research and data are widely distributed. Over 500 million people-that’s a lot of eyeballs. Interestingly enough the EAA is including Turkey in the scheme – so its taking the long, wide view. The EAA has a 13 year history of Open Data, such as making greenhouse gas information available to all, but normally focuses on EU policymakers, rather than citizens. Its great to see them turning the funnel the other way…

This morning EyeOnEarth, the first product of that agreement was launched. EyeOnEarth is a site listing water bathing quality for beaches and waterways throughout Europe.

It contains historical data going back as far as 1991 as well as the ability to give feedback on any beaches/waterways you have visited or are familiar with. This community-based approach makes it an exceedingly powerful tool and this has to be the first time we have seen grassroots activism, supported by central transparency, powered by Microsoft!

This water quality site is the first in a series of such sites which will be rolled out by Microsoft and the EEA. Others in the works are an air quality site and a site about nature and biodiversity parks you can visit.

The opening up of public data for public consumption, somewhat in the manner of Prof. Hans Rosling’s fabulous Gapminder site, but going well beyond that with the ability to give feedback into the system is hugely laudable.

One further necessary addition to the site is access for mobile browsers. I will want to add info about beaches/waterways when I am at the beach from my iPhone or N95. This is not yet possible but when I asked Microsoft’s Director EU & NATO, Ludo De Bock about this his reassured me that:

We haven’t tested or adapted the site for mobile access now due to time constraints but mobile access is a core component of our vision for the Observatory portal as we like to offer an alerting/subscription service

Oh, and the screenshot above was taken viewing the site in Safari on my Mac. I also tested it in Firefox and it works perfectly there too.

Well done guys.

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Green Shoots at Microsoft: Public Sector Engagement: EU, UK

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As I have written previously, Microsoft is finally beginning to pull together a coherent green story under new sustainability supremo Rob Bernard. The company is also missing a bunch of tricks, but more on that later. But back to the good. Yesterday came news that Microsoft is signing a non-exclusive five year deal with the European Environmental Agency (EAA) with a goal to “make environmental information more accessible to citizens in Europe”. A laudable goal. As I have written before We Are The Watchdogs. But in order to be watchdogs we need open data, transparently collected and shared. Its somewhat ironic that Microsoft is providing its services and software for free; given the EU sometimes has an issue with freebies. It will be interesting to see whether the EEA’s new web presence still uses Google custom search like the current one. The first step is to build a Web 1.0-style publishing portal, which will be based on the usual Microsoft middleware, and some Microsoft Live services, such as Virtual Earth. The EAA has wider ambitions that just publishing data however. According to the press release Professor Jacqueline McGlade, Executive Director of the EEA said:

“This collaboration is a first of its kind to establish a two-way communication on the environment. Until now, authorities, including the EEA, have communicated their data to the public. But local observers, who are often the first to notice real change in their environment, had difficulties sharing their observations with others. This partnership will provide them a platform to do exactly that”.

Likesay, this is pretty much a canonical Greenmonk story. We are all watchdogs, we are all observers. Science progresses most effectively when research and data are widely distributed. Over 500 million people-that’s a lot of eyeballs. Interestingly enough the EAA is including Turkey in the scheme – so its taking the long, wide view. The EAA has a 13 year history of Open Data, such as making greenhouse gas information available to all, but normally focuses on EU policymakers, rather than citizens. Its great to see them turning the funnel the other way…

In other Microsoft related eco news, brought to my attention by Dominic Campbell, the first social media manager at a UK local authority, Wakefield Council saves over £4m while cutting carbon emissions.A skeptic might say this story was just greenwashing, but at Greenmonk we tend to focus on outcomes, rather than looking for hyprocrisy. As Jamie Hailstone writes: “the council will save more than £4m and cut carbon emissions by 35 tons.” There is a virtuous circle created by marketing efficiency as green. Green is Lean. Microsoft’s virtualisation team could learn a lot from the case study – there is nothing wrong with quick wins. Final bonus link: check out this sexy story about Virtual Earth running on Wind powered-servers.