A Look Inside Facebook's Green Announcements

Published November 10, 2010

Facebook, as you may have heard, is going green. Or, more accurately, they're starting to communicate their green initiatives.

But it's also fair to say that they're still getting a grasp on exactly what it means to undertake a green program, and how exactly they do it.

After last week's short item about Facebook.com/green, the home for all things environmental at the social network, I spoke with Kathleen Loughlin, a member of the company's communications team, about the kickoff.

"We've been thinking about it a lot -- asking, how do you tell the green story?" she explained. Now, they're in the midst of gathering details about all of their disparate green efforts. "There are some that we didn't even know about -- employees would email and say 'we are doing this on our team, you should list this'" on the "green programs" page of Facebook's green site.

As with many companies that don't yet have a dedicated green executive or a green team, there are siloed teams at Facebook that are all working in their respective departments -- Facilities, Infrastructure, etc. -- on green efforts. So the first step in Facebook's green program was making a list of the green programs already in place.

To date, there are four different programs the company is publicly announcing. They include water conservation efforts that have cut water used by the 1,700 Facebook employees by 60 percent, a Google-esque employee shuttle program that 40 percent of employees use instead of driving to work, and recycling and composting efforts in-house.

Just as Facebook's in-house green projects had been un- or understated before last week, we're also getting a first look at some of its IT innovations -- even though they were quietly unveiled months or even years ago.

HipHop for PHP, for example, was introduced in February 2010, and one of the company's engineers gave the program a six-month review in August, but last week was the first time it had appeared on my radar.

I am frankly perplexed by

Lew Rakowsky (not verified), November 11, 2010 - 13:23

I am frankly perplexed by Facebook's attempt at public disclosure. Not only does it feels a bit awkward and tentative, it strikes me as being off-strategy. Given that they're the largest social network, one would expect them to leverage their role more building a green community. As a "sustainability enabler" they could be facilitating discussions amongst businesses and sustainability professionals. And, within that context, consider a more innovative disclosure strategy.

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A Look Inside Facebook's Green Announcements

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