I recently attended Peats Ridge Festival for New Years Eve. It was a great opportunity to escape the city, celebrate the turning of the years and importantly do this without generating a great deal of waste. The festival had some great ideas for reducing waste and impact on the environment, some of those being:

  • recycle, recycle, recycle - divided into compost, recycle (cans, bottles etc) and landfill
  • plates and cutlery made from palm litter
  • pit compost toilets, they were surprisingly cleaner and with less odour then the “Kenny” style porta-loos
  • minimum impact transport alternatives ie bus, train, bike etc

All in all a fantastic experience - the music line up included Hermitude, Pivot, Firehouse, Resurrectors Ras Ronnie, King Tide, Afro Moses, kid Confucius and many, many, many more.

But what can we, as electronic designers, developers do to reduce our impact on the environment? I have compiled a short list of things we can do to protect our greatest design - the environment:

  • recycle, many companies think they are doing their bit by recycling paper - but what about cans and bottles? Coordinate with others in your building and organise a building wide approach to recycling paper, plastics and glass. Ensure your garbage collectors are disposing of recyclable items appropriately. If your building has a garden, start composting
  • get to work the green way: walk, run, catch a bus or train, car-pool, skate. Vary your environmentally friendly mode of transport to keep things interesting - have fun and keep fit and healthy. Employers may like to encourage employees to catch public transport by providing an allowance
  • offset greenhouse gas emissions by buying carbon credits. You can calculate your emissions and buy credits to offset them from organisations such as Climate Friendly, GreenFleet and Elementree
  • buy green electricity including solar and wind. Hydro electricity is good however a great deal of land clearing, river diversion and habitats are destroyed in the process. Choose a green electricity provider at Green Electricity Watch
  • be energy conscious - turn lights, computers and devices off if they are not required
  • videoconference - the cost of videoconferencing equipment is no longer expensive

Have i forgotten anything? Please feel free to inform others by posting a comment below.