Introducing Greencloud

Over the past few days, as part of Cloudflare’s Impact Week, we’ve written about the work we’re doing to help build a greener Internet. We’re making bold climate commitments for our own network and facilities and introducing new capabilities that help customers understand and reduce their impact. And in addition to organization-level initiatives, we also recognize the importance of individual impact — which is why we’re excited to publicly introduce Greencloud, our sustainability-focused employee working group.

Greencloud is a coalition of Cloudflare employees who are passionate about the environment. Initially founded in 2019, we’re a cross-functional, global team with a few areas of focus:

1. Awareness: Greencloud compiles and shares resources about environmental activism with each other and the broader organization. We believe that collective action — not just conscious consumerism, but also engagement in local policy and community movements — is critical to a more sustainable future, and that the ability to affect change starts with education. We’re also consistently inspired by the great work other folks in tech are doing in this space, and love sharing updates from peers that push us to do better within our own spheres of influence.

2. Support: Our membership includes Cloudflare team members from across the org chart, which enables us to be helpful in supporting multidisciplinary projects led by functional teams within Cloudflare.

3. Advocacy: We recognize the importance of both individual and organization-level action. We continue to challenge ourselves, each other and the broader organization to think about environmental impact in every decision we make as a company.

Our vision is to contribute on every level to addressing the climate crisis and creating a more sustainable future, helping Cloudflare become a clear leader in sustainable practices among tech companies. Moreover, we want to empower our colleagues to make more sustainable decisions in each of our individual lives.

Since launching in 2019, Greencloud has created a space for conversation and idea generation around Cloudflare’s sustainability initiatives, many of which have been implemented across our organization. As a group, we’ve created content to educate ourselves and external audiences about a broad range of sustainability topics:

• Benchmarked Cloudflare’s sustainability practices against peer companies to understand our baseline and source ideas for improvement.

• Curated guides for colleagues on peer-reviewed content, product recommendations, and “low-hanging fruit” actions we all have the ability to take, such as choosing a sustainable 401k investment plan and using a paperless option for all employee documents.

• Hosted events such as sustainability-themed trivia/quiz nights to spark discussion and teach participants techniques for making more sustainable decisions in our own homes and lives.

In addition to creating “evergreen” resources and hosting events, Greencloud threw a special celebration for April 22, 2021 — the 51st global Earth Day. For the surrounding week, we hosted a series of events to engage our employees and community in sustainability education and actions.

You can catch reruns of our Earth Week content on Cloudflare TV, covering a broad range of topics:

Tuesday: InfrastructureA chat with Michael Aylward, Head of Cloudflare's Network Partners Program and renewable energy expert, about the carbon footprint of Internet infrastructure. We explored how the Internet contributes to climate change and what tech companies, including Cloudflare, are doing to minimize this footprint.

Wednesday: PolicyAn interview with Doug Kramer, Cloudflare's General Counsel, and Patrick Day, Cloudflare's Senior Policy Counsel, on the overlap between sustainability, tech, and public policy. We dove into how tech companies, including Cloudflare, are working with policymakers to build a more sustainable future.

Thursday: Cloudflare and the ClimateFrancisco Ponce de León interviewed Sagar Aryal, the CTO of Plant for the Planet, an organization of young Climate Justice Ambassadors with the goal of planting one trillion trees. Plant for the Planet is a participant in Project Galileo, Cloudflare's program providing free protection for at-risk public interest groups.

In addition, Amy Bibeau, our Greencloud Places team lead, interviewed Cloudflare's Head Of Real Estate and Workplace Operations, Caroline Quick and LinkedIn's Dana Jennings, Senior Project Manager, Global Sustainability for a look into the opportunities and challenges around creating sustainable workplaces. Like most companies, Cloudflare is re-thinking what our workplace will look like post-COVID.  Baking sustainability into those plans, and being a model for other companies, can be game changing.

Friday: Personal Impact & TriviaA panel of Greencloud employees addressed the challenge of personal versus collective/system-level action and broke down some of the highest value actions we’re working on taking in our own lives.

Finally, Greencloud took over Cloudflare TV’s signature game show Silicon Valley Squares with Earth Day-themed questions!

No one person, group, or organization working alone can save our planet — the degree of collective action required to reverse climate change is staggering, but we’re excited and inspired by the work that leaders across every industry are pitching in every day. We’d love for you and/or your organization to join us in this calling to create a more sustainable planet and tell us about your initiatives to exchange ideas.