Roompact has always been sensitive to the needs of our planet, attempting to make green choices whenever possible. Beginning in 2021, Roompact made a formal commitment to our planet by offsetting all of our carbon usage when greener options weren’t available. Partnering with the organization We Are Neutral, we have submitted an inventory about our carbon usage again for this year and have purchased offsets to achieve carbon neutrality.
Although carbon offsets are a positive step, we also aim to reduce our carbon usage overall. We believe that being transparent about our carbon footprint and our efforts to reduce it can be an important catalyst for encouraging other companies, organizations, and individuals to do the same. Below you will find our report card for this year:
Last year’s carbon usage: 32.40 tons
This year’s carbon usage: 18.84 tons
Air Travel. Roompact’s biggest carbon producing activities by far, related to travel–specifically flight travel. Our flights are typically for attending conferences and for the on-site training we do for all of our campus partners. As an integral part of our business, air travel will continue to be an important part of our work. We have discussed ways of reducing our reliance on air travel through more virtual training and engagement opportunities with our campuses and partners. We have also flown JetBlue, which is currently the only US airline to offset all of the carbon from its flights. Those flights are excluded from our above totals.
We found it somewhat odd that our number of flights increased this year, but there was a reduction in the carbon usage calculation. We reached out to We Are Neutral to inquire why this may be. They explained:
We have changed our methodology for calculating flight emissions. This is standard for greenhouse gas accounting. Every year, new reports are released with updated, science-based emissions coefficients.
The flight industry has been at the forefront of climate change blame and there has been a huge push towards accountability and sustainable initiatives. The methodology we used last year for Roompact’s flight travel used standardized coefficients for short, medium, and long haul flights in conjunction with national averages, such as the average number of passengers on a flight. The new methodology is specific to each flight itself, and estimates emissions from the burning of jet fuel for average fuel consumptions associated only with the jet models that could be used for each flight.
Remote Work. Because Roompact is a fully remote company, our office expenses related to electricity, natural gas, water, and waste are calculated based on the home offices of our staff members. Staff are encouraged to choose green (or greener) options whenever possible. We had a goal for 2022 to begin subsidizing employee energy so they can purchase completely renewable options, but we’ve had to move this goal forward into the future.
Servers. Because Roompact is a provider of software services “in the cloud,” you may wonder about the footprint of the servers used to run our software. We desire to move our servers to those powered by 100% renewable energy, but we unfortunately still aren’t quite there yet. By 2025 our server providers will achieve carbon neutrality with a hope towards moving to complete renewables.
Purchasing. When ordering supplies, swag, and other materials, we prioritize those with strong environmental credentials (and those that are certified as B-Corps). We’ve been able to deepen this commitment this year, specifically reducing our paper usage, but we are still looking for sustainable printing options that meet our needs.
