So Greenpeace dropped their annual list of environmentally unfriendly tech firms yesterday, and once again, through calculated data manipulation complete coincidence, a successful, fashionable and approachably-branded company is bringing up the rear. Nice work, Greenpeace. Way to contribute to the credibility of environmentalists.
Anyway, all this talk of eco-friendly technology got me thinking that, as far as greeness goes, Magnetk must be up there with the best in the world. After all, there are only three employees at the office, and not one of them drives to work.
Jeff usually bikes or takes the commuter rail, even though we all know from his Twitter feed that the stations frequently smell like pee. And Jon cycle-commutes with such intensity that cars are often forced from the road because of it.
While the office may not be LEED Platinum certified, it’s still in a converted Victorian; with all the impacts and emissions associated with demolition and construction, modifying an old structure is usually less harmful than building a new one.
Also, having windows that actually open means that on all but the hottest days, climate control can be achieved without switching on the small window AC unit (or “entropy pump”, as Jon likes to call it).
Furthermore, the company is bootstrapped—the guys that own it built it with their own cash. That means no unpleasant uber-capitalists are cranking carbon-besotted dollars into your seamless SFTP integration. And because there’s no physical product, packaging, or shipping, the environmental costs of production are all but nonexistant.
Even the office location screams Earth-friendly: it’s in one of the most bikeable cities in America, and everything from the train to the subway to locally-brewed beer to sushi to the best burritos in town is well within a five-minute walk.
If the employees were feeling unusually lazy one day, it’s still not a crisis; any number of local establishments deliver by bike. There’s no need even to step out for a cup of coffee, thanks to an office bottomless cup card from the coffee shop downstairs.
So are there greener companies out there? Probably—people are way into that sort of thing these days. But they tend both to work way too hard at it, and to shove it in your face once they’ve achieved results.
Magnetk’s greeness is elegant and serendipitous, and if I hadn’t written this blog post, no one at the company ever would have bothered to tell you about it.
