We were inspired recently when Microsoft announced that it was going carbon neutral by 2030, and completely paying back its historic carbon debt by 2040. Amazon has also made the similar, though slightly less lofty pledge to be carbon neutral by the year 2040.
As vendors to Trailhead with their cloud services, these two companies account for a lot of our carbon emissions, so it was great to see that they are already working to offset those. But it also got us thinking–how could Trailhead do our part to reduce or remove our carbon footprint and help with climate change?
As a much smaller company than either Amazon or Microsoft, it actually wasn’t very hard to figure out what our annual carbon emissions were. We used a company called terrapass to help us calculate of carbon footprint using their excellent “Carbon Footprint” calculator. With that tool, we were quickly able to calculate the carbon output from our computers, air travel, and daily commutes, and to figure out how much it would cost to have terrapass help us offset those emissions.
With that money, terrapass invests in carbon-reduction projects like landfill gas capture, farm power, wind farms, and abandoned coal mine methane. Based on the carbon emissions we estimated, they are able to offset an equivalent amount of C02 and other greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere.
We appreciate Microsoft’s leadership in this area, and the inspiration it provided for Trailhead to do its part. We hope you will find it similarly inspiring, and use a company like terrapass to do the same. It’s really easy to do, and more importantly, the right thing to do.