Airgead Studio

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Environment

We don't want to rest on our past performance, so here's a run-down on what is happening with Airgead Studio in 2010.

Some of you may be aware that JackGreen was placed in receivership in mid-December last year.  JackGreen was our electricity supplier.  The first we knew of it was when we were contacted by another provider offering us a new deal,  a full month after the administrators were called in.  Phone calls to JackGreen went unanswered.

After getting quotes, we have signed a two-year contract with AGL to supply us with 100% green electricity.  This means that we are still entitled to use the 100% GreenPower logo you see on the right of the screen.

We have also off-set the servers in the US for another 12 months, and have increased the offsets to 125% of the usage.  Our new certificate can be viewed by clicking on the Climate Friendly logo on the right of the screen.

Thanks to the feed-in tariff now in place for Photovoltaic power now in operation in NSW, we are now in the process of obtaining quotes to put solar panels on the roof to help with our power usage.

Lastly, but by no means least, we will be participating in Earth Hour again this year.  Earth Hour started in Sydney in 2007 and we have taken part for the last two years.  Turn off your lights for an hour at 8.30 pm on Saturday 27 March 2010 and help reduce carbon emissions from lighting.  Bees wax candles from Queen B Beeswax Candles are a good solution for lighting as they are beautiful, non-toxic and carbon neutral.  Please click on the Earth Hour logo on the right and register your home, school or business for this year.

 

Airgead Studio goes Carbon Neutral!

Folks,

Airgead Studio has gone carbon neutral.

The IT industry has had some bad press over the last few years and much of that criticism is well deserved. The industry uses a massive amount of power and there really hasn't been much effort to reduce that.

Here at Airgead Studio we are doing our (very small) bit to try to redress the balance.

Our office runs on 100% renewable energy and we have tried to minimise our energy usage by insulating the office, which reduces the need for air-conditioning and heating. We have also installed a "green wall" of deciduous fruit trees on the northern and western sides of the office to shade the building in summer and let the sun through in winter. The fact that they produce a bumper crop of fruit each year is an added bonus.

Our servers are hosted in the US and the datacentre we use does not run on renewables. To cover the CO2 emissions from our servers, we purchase offsets for 100% of the power we use to run the servers and associated cooling. The offsets we use are all accredited and go towards building new renewable energy projects in Australia and the developing world. You can view our offset certificate by clicking here.

Our compost binWe also try to reduce our impact in other ways as well.

We try not to travel too much and when we do, public transport is our first choice.

Hot water is provided by a solar system on the roof, which requires minimal, off-peak power to run and on most sunny days uses no power at all.

We use the minimum amount of paper that we can and when we do need to use it, we use recycled wherever possible.

All office paper waste is either recycled or shredded and composted.

The veggie patchThe compost is then used to grow organic vegetables in our garden.

More veggie patch

In case you are wondering where the water for the garden comes from (since Australia is in an almost-permanent drought these days), we have a 5000L water tank which provides 100% of the water we need for the garden.

Our plans for the future include a photovoltaic system on the roof to supply our power off-grid, and additional water tanks for toilet flushing and other non-drinking uses.

One of our aims is to show that you can run a successful business in a sustainable manner. If you are interested in running a green business and want some advice, or already run one and want to tell us about how we can do things better, get in touch.

Cheers

Dave

 



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