This page contains a draft of a proposed HCoop Environmental Policy. As always, add comments or proposed revisions here.

1. Background

One of the defining SevenPrinciples of cooperatives is "Concern for Community," or more succinctly, Social Responsibility. A cooperative that ignores its social responsibility has ceased to be cooperative at all and has become a mutant, renegade firm. Environmental responsibility, then, is an extension of a cooperative's greater social responsibility.

The greatest single resistance to a solid environmental policy is the attitude that it will increase costs with no tangible benefit. In fact, often environmental discipline yields a direct cost saving, and where additional costs are incurred they are usually small for this type of business. Additionally, the ability to certify our business as green and powered by renewable energy gives us bragging rights that few other services in a crowded field can offer, and can draw in more business from environmentally conscious consumers. This is the best kind of advertising money can buy.

Moreover, the sooner we adopt a comprehensive policy, the easier it will be to stick to it, rather than doing it halfway and making excuses once we are large that we've never done it in the past.

On to the substance:

2. Power

Baseline: Zero carbon emissions, ideally from clean energy offsets.

How: Purchasing renewable energy credits or carbon offsets equal to the number of KW-hours consumed by HCoop servers.

Where: Two of the better options I have found:

• [http://www.nativeenergy.com/ NativeEnergy] WindBuilders.

• [http://www.carbonfund.org/ Carbonfund] Carbonfund offsets.

Immediate cost: between $0.05 and $0.15 per member monthly. Future cost: the same or lower, as hardware utilization rates increase, and more efficient hardware is acquired.

AdamChlipala says:

• I know we discussed this when you first joined, but would you mind rehashing here how buying energy credits allows us to be certified as powered by renewable energy, or how in general it can be seen as anything but a charitable donation unconnected to our real operations?

  • NativeEnergy's CoolWatts certificates are certified by [http://www.green-e.org/ Green-e] as putting the number of KW-hours of wind energy on the face of the certificate into the electrical grid. Our servers directly consume electricity from coal, gas, and other non-renewable, polluting and greenhouse gas-emitting sources. We can calculate the exact amount of KW-hours of dirty power consumed by our servers and purchase certificates for that exact amount. If we average 10A of current, then we use 110V*10A*365.25*24/1000 = 9642 KW-hr per year. Buying 10,000 KW-hr of wind certificates would then be equivalent to powering our servers with wind turbines and displacing the dirty power that our servers otherwise use (which costs $8/mo from NativeEnergy. Once we migrate we will probably be using around 5A or less to begin, so the cost would be proportionately less). This is not a charitable donation, it is internalizing the direct environmental cost of our servers. If we bought more energy credits than the power that we actually consume, that would be a "charitable donation."

    Carbon credits are similar, except they use a more general market-based approach to dealing with greenhouse gases only through a variety of programs. --NathanKennedy

3. Hardware

Baseline: Ensure that no HCoop electronics end up in landfill.

How: At a minimum, send all hardware not sold or donated to a reputable recycling facility.

Where: Suggestions?

Immediate cost: none

Future cost: Selling hardware could save money. Recycling could cost some money as hardware is retired. Some manufacturers will recycle their hardware for free.

Links to computer recycling programs:

• [http://www.dell.com/recycle Dell Recycling]

4. Paper

Baseline: Minimize use of paper. Use only post-consumer recycled/tree free paper.

Where:

• [http://www.livingtreepaper.com/ Living Tree Paper] - post-consumer / hemp / flax paper

DavidBettis says:

• I don't think creating policies that deal with products that are of such limited use to the coop need to be encoded in documents such as this. Alternatively, we could have a section that states that we should prefer recycled products, when economically feasible.

Immediate cost: none, HCoop's use of paper is currently limited to occasional mailings and corporate records. Future cost: cost savings through conservation. Paper is such a tiny portion of cost that nominal premium for recycled or tree-free paper is nothing.

5. External Resources

• [http://www.phone.coop/about/envir_policy.html phone.coop's environmental policy]