For Earth Day 2021, ESM Inbound is committing to playing its part in combating climate change. Our core mission has always been to make Everybody Smile More and we can’t think of a better way to meet that mission than working towards a carbon-neutral future.
As a fully remote business, it’s easy for ESM Inbound to suggest that we’re contributing to a low-carbon world, just because our employees aren’t driving to work every day. But that thinking doesn’t take into account the day-to-day impact of the digital services that are at the heart of our work. Email alone contributes up to 986,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions worldwide… and we help our clients to send a lot of emails!
As a digital consultancy, the vast majority of our work involves cloud-computing platforms. We routinely build systems using Google Cloud, while our SaaS partners (such as HubSpot, Vidyard, Databox and Qwilr) build their entire platforms on tools like Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure.
Each of these platforms comprise huge, multinational networks of data centres. Each server in each centre is using huge amounts of electricity, which generates heat… which then means high-powered cooling systems have to use even more electricity.
We are under no illusions that the work we do could easily contribute to climate change.
As of today, ESM Inbound will start planting trees. While we won’t be grabbing our shovels and getting our hands dirty ourselves, we’ll be using our API integration capabilities to plant trees on a daily basis.
As a first step to making this happen, we have connected our accounting systems to More Trees, an environmentally focused platform that enables individuals and businesses to plant trees easily and sustainably. Each time one of our clients pays an invoice, we will automatically plant a tree.
As a busy consultancy, with the majority of our clients on a recurring billing arrangement, that’s a lot of trees. Next time you’re paying your bill, you can look at the fantastic deliverables our team put together for you and know that clicking ‘pay’ will mean that you’ve planted a tree.
When choosing a provider for our commitment to planting trees, we were conscious of the ‘greenwashing’ marketing efforts often reported on and around Earth Day. ESM Inbound wants to ensure our plans are authentic, well-researched and long-lasting.
In the choice of provider, there were two critical factors for us:
More Trees vets their tree-planting partners extensively, taking ownership over their efforts to ensure their trees have a survival rate of 80% (the remaining 20% consisting of natural forest regeneration). More Trees has the additional benefits of their plantations are having a positive impact in local communities through:
As Marco Stellardi, Acting Head of Project Management, who introduced ESM Inbound to More Trees, states:
“Being a global, remote agency reminds us that the planet is our home and that it is our responsibility to take care of it for future generations. With More Trees, we can see the tangible difference we are making in the world. The portal dashboard displays the number of trees we’ve planted and the volume of carbon emissions we’ve offset.”
Earth Day is marked on 22nd April every year, and has been since it was first established in 1970. At that time, there was an emerging public consciousness about the state of our planet which has only grown year on year since.
Now, with over a billion people taking part in Earth Day across 190 countries around the world, Earth Day is a key date in many of our calendars, and gives us the opportunity to reflect on what we can do, as businesses and individuals, to move forward with impactful and lasting environmental actions.
Learn more about Earth Day and the green actions you and your business can take.
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