GoogleGreen: A straw-hut style huddle room made with sustainably forested wood from Pescadero Willow Farm, bound by a saline-based, toxin-free solution.
The more investigation I do in green workspace designs and fit-outs as part of my work in leaner+greener business, the more I seem to keep tripping over the work being done as part of the Google Green initiatives. It's interesting to see how much effort they're putting into taking a Big Picture view, going beyond carbon neutral to carbon positive, using lifecycle assessment through the vetting of their supply chain, asking source of origin questions, composition and taking the time to consider integrated lifecycle design in a far fuller extent than many workplaces do. The effect is clearly rippling out beyond their company boundary, through initiatives such as the Health Product Declaration (HPD) Open Standard - helping enable insight into the health impacts of materials selection for facility fit outs and workplace services.
These efforts are going beyond just spanning their operational footprint, staff commuting, eating patterns and office fit outs, to diversifying their underlying asset base by backing renewable energy ventures at industrial scale. It's a game changing approach to not just their own business, but also to HOW to do business and so refreshing to see. Their campus energy consumption/generation dashboard stacks up very nicely against a recent visit I did to the CSIRO Energy Research facility here in Newcastle, though the Australian site is miniscule by comparison to the Google renewable energy investment portfolio.
Equally impressive is the extent to which fun and light, humour and whimsy still features in their efforts. Seriously, it's hard not to be impressed. Who wouldn't rather have a slippery-dip than an elevator in their office ;-) (see what I mean at 2m32s in the video below).
These efforts are going beyond just spanning their operational footprint, staff commuting, eating patterns and office fit outs, to diversifying their underlying asset base by backing renewable energy ventures at industrial scale. It's a game changing approach to not just their own business, but also to HOW to do business and so refreshing to see. Their campus energy consumption/generation dashboard stacks up very nicely against a recent visit I did to the CSIRO Energy Research facility here in Newcastle, though the Australian site is miniscule by comparison to the Google renewable energy investment portfolio.
Equally impressive is the extent to which fun and light, humour and whimsy still features in their efforts. Seriously, it's hard not to be impressed. Who wouldn't rather have a slippery-dip than an elevator in their office ;-) (see what I mean at 2m32s in the video below).
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