We Attended the 2021 Climate Strike - What’s Next?

On Friday, September 24, 2021, passionate people (many of whom are current students and schoolchildren) across more than 154 countries worldwide participated in a global strike to demand government action to prevent further climate change. In many of the Fridays for Future locations, it was the largest piece of in-person climate action since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Berlin was no exception! Members of the Cobot team are proud to have joined the crowd.

What happened

The excitement of being together in the streets again didn’t overshadow the outrage at another year gone by without necessary action being taken to protect the planet, the climate, and people. In her Berlin address, Greta Thunberg summed it up concisely:

“It is clearer than ever that no political party is doing close to enough.”

Members of our team met for a bike protest around the Brandenburg gate, before making their way to the Bundestag—the seat of the German parliament—to meet more Cobot teammates and add to the throngs of people, posters, and placards. Cobot is committed to supporting climate actions that foster more sustainable practices and policies in our sector and within the communities that we’re a part of.

Alex, CTO, and Lucie, senior developer, join other Berliners in front of the national parliament building in the city’s center.

Reflecting on our impact

Since the onset of the pandemic we haven’t run our regular sustainability audit. Since our last audit in 2019, here are a couple of notable changes:

We still maintain our office, but with more members of our team working from home and neighborhood coworking spaces, fewer of us commute in each day.
We continue to bike and use public transport to come to the office, or team lunches, and events.
By re-distributing hardware from the office, we’ve reduced the number of new devices, like monitors, needed to keep the Cobot team powered up around the city.
Some of our high-impact consumption items, such as our weekly fruit basket are paused. We’re consuming less coffee with fewer people in the office and now opt for plant-based milk alternatives whenever possible.
Needless to say, our air travel has remained minimal as we’ve joined many of our favorite coworking events remotely. Those we’ve attended personally have been greeted by smaller Cobot cohorts.

Thilo, our CEO, and Alex, CTO, heading back to the Cobot office after the strike.

Changes going forward

While we continue to reconfigure how and where Cobot works, we want to start taking a closer look at the environmental impact of a remote team.

We’re grateful for the tools and resources that other digital teams are providing to help estimate impact, and encourage others to take the time to understand their work in this way.

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!