What is Sustainable Business?
What is Sustainable Web Hosting?
These questions have been asked again and again.
For the June 2010 Seattle Green Festival, we created an interactive
booth environment to help answer these questions and provide "entry points"
for visitors to learn about our take on sustainability.
Teaming up with Peraska, the company
that performed our sustainability analysis and which continues to educated
and advise us as we continue down the path to sustainability, we produced
a double-booth sized wall.
The Wall measures 7 feet high by 24 feet in length. It is constructed of reclaimed foam core, gator board, and vinyl banners reclaimed from
tradeshows (materials that would have ended up in a landfill as
they are not
recyclable).
The Wall tells the story of The Three C's of Sustainability, a concept
we created to explain our unique approach to business:
- The first "C" is Conversation: an entry point via communication,
education, and informed engagement.
- The second "C" is Community: creating partnerships and
webs of trust that care for all members equally.
- The third "C" is Commerce: from community, strong, self-supportive
business and trade naturally occurs.
Part of the display was a real-time output of the electricity we used at
the show, thanks to the metrics monitoring of a simple device known as the Kill
A Watt. By plugging the Kill A Watt between our equipment and the electrical
drop, we were able to see exactly how much energy was used during the show.
We did this in part to demonstrate our use of metrics, as well as
how we monitor (on a much larger scale) energy
use
at our Web hosting data facility.
We also highlighted as a kiosk (also made of reclaimed tradeshow materials)
our latest community service, Renewsing.com,
which demonstrates how sustainable business methods can connect
clients with one another and creates an independent, supportive community.
Renewsing
is
designed
to generate additional traffic for our customer bloggers, is an entirely
free and opt-in service we operate as a "thank you" for those who
actively publish content and chose to host their Web site with us.
Finally, The Wall will have additional use when not exhibited at tradeshows:
it will become a permanent centerpiece in our office, and the Renewsing
kiosk will sit in the entry way to our office so visitors can learn about
the growing community of Canvas Dreams customers.
All this is just part of the ongoing story
of our path to sustainability. |
