New Signature Core Values: Sustainability (a.k.a., Being Green)
New Signature’s core values shape the way we do business. One of these core values is to, “Help create a better community through our actions.” One way that we help create a better community is through our efforts to ensure that we limit our (and our clients’) impact on the environment. New Signature’s goal is to be green like Kermit the Frog. As such, New Signature places a strong emphasis on reducing our impact on the environment. We have take a number of steps to do this, including the following:
Transportation. New Signature participates in WMATA’s SmartBenefits program and provides each employee with a corporate ZipCar membership. Participation in WMATA’s SmartBenefits program encourages New Signature employees to use public transportation for commuting as it reduces the cost by making it pre-tax. While New Signature encourages employees to use public transportation, especially the Metro, to visit clients there are some instances that require they drive. In these instances, the ZipCar membership enables our staff not to have to bring cars to work–instead they can simply use a ZipCar on an hourly basis.
Recycling and reuse. New Signature works hard to combat the environmental problem of unwanted electronic equipment being dumped into landfills. As a result we use a number of strategies to ensure that computer-related waste are being recycled, reused, or disposed of in an environmentally conscious way. In our office we use GreenDisk’s Technotrash Cans to collect CDs, diskettes, DVDs, ink cartridges, cell phones, videotapes, pagers, PDAs, and all of our “byte-sized” electronic waste for recycling. We also use Turtle Wings—a local electronic waste recycling outfit—to properly dispose of other electronic waste items that New Signature or our clients produce. A final strategy that we employ is to try to take any computer equipment that still has a useful life and place it with nonprofits who will derive value from this donation.
Recycled products. Where possible New Signature purchases products that are composed of recycled materials, or in the case of office furniture, we will often purchase it second hand. Our goal is to limit the amount of materials that enter the landfill. We also try to find new homes for large items that we no longer have use for, such as office furniture, using resources such as Freecycle and Craigslist. Additionally, we recycle as much paper/cardboard and cans as possible and we have many blue recycle bins scattered throughout the office.
Energy conservation. New Signature has worked with a number of clients to implement environmentally friendly policies that reduce energy consumption, such as virtualization efforts to reduce the number of physical servers in a network and group policies that force computers and monitors to sleep/hibernate during periods of inactivity. We also practice what we preach. In 2009, New Signature used virtualization technologies to cut by half the number of servers in our own network environment. This allowed us to greatly reduce the electricity used by our computing infrastructure. We cut out so many servers that we were even able to remove a server cabinet from our server room and “freecycle” it to a new lucky owner.