Only a little over a year ago, Greta Thunberg sat alone outside the Swedish parliament striking from school every Friday for climate action. How much things have changed in a year! Last Friday, we joined the global student-led climate strikes organized by groups such as Fridays for Future, the Sunrise Movement, and Extinction Rebellion. In Germany, over 1.4 million people took to the streets including over 250,000 in Berlin — where protests shut down several central neighborhoods. Over 4 million people participated worldwide. And the workers of Cobot were proud to be a part of it.
What We Saw
Between the Berlin marches and the Washington DC march (where our Communication Specialist was attending the GWA conference), we experienced an overflow of outrage at the lack of action from the political system to fight a warming planet.
At Cobot, we’re taking steps not only to increase our own sustainability, but to advocate for changes in laws and accountability for the largest carbon emitters.
What Steps We’re Taking
We have taken a hard look at our business practices and attempted to decarbonize as many steps of the process as possible. We use renewable electricity for our office and for our servers (Amazon AWS), we all commute using low-impact travel methods (walking, biking, or public transportation), and we buy offsets for our plane travel (which is admittedly more than average).
If you want to read more about our analysis of our own practices, you can check out the Cobot sustainability audit.
What You Can Do
There are a number of steps you can take to reduce your (and your coworking space’s) carbon footprint. But the real change will come from getting in the streets and demanding change. Coworking spaces have a unique position where you can harness the power of your members and the ecological benefits of remote and flexible work. The major polluters have immense financial resources and will not change out of the goodness of their hearts. That’s why supporting climate strikes, donating your time and money to environmental causes, and getting organized are the most powerful steps you can take. After all, just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. Every day that goes by in which these companies continue to operate as usual is one day closer to irreversible climate destruction.
This week is a week of climate action, see if there’s something in your area that you can participate in and demand change. And then join us at the next demonstration, and the one after that, and the one after that, until we’ve put our world on a sustainable course. For there to be a future of work, there has to be a livable future for our planet.
If you aren’t already using Cobot as your coworking management software, give it a go! You’ll find that our features can help you run your coworking space more effectively and grow your community. Just sign up for a free trial or a live demo session. And if you have questions, our support team is all ears!
Happy Coworking!
