How a fully remote software company can have a positive impact on the environment

April is Earth Month, so it seems like a good time to talk about the part of the B Impact Assessment we struggled with the most. As a fully remote software company, how can we have a positive impact not just on people, but on the planet as well?

Like many of you, I carry a lot of guilt and worry about my impact on the environment. At the same time, I realize that my individual actions likely have little impact on climate change. Whether I recycle a box or choose to drive instead of fly, it’s a drop in the bucket in the sea of harmful human actions.

I feel similarly as a business owner. As a small business with a small footprint, is it a waste of time and energy to try to reduce our harmful impact on the environment? Our impact on the environment is so small already, so it might not seem worth it.

And then comes the guilt. If everyone feels like this, things will not change. Guilt may not be the healthiest of motivators, but the more humans who take action, the better off we’ll all be. So, here’s what the team at KnowledgeOwl has done to improve our environmental impact and performance.

Virtual Office Environmental Stewardship Policy

One of the first things we realized we could do is implement a policy that demonstrates our commitment to the environment and encourages our team to implement good practices at home.

For anyone interested in implementing this type of policy, you are welcome to use ours as a template: download our Virtual Office Environmental Stewardship Policy

Lessons Learned: This type of policy seemed benign (who would be opposed to recycling?), so I was surprised by some negative reactions to it. As a people-first company, we value collaborative autonomy and dislike telling anyone what to do. So maybe it shouldn’t have been surprising when some team members did not want KnowledgeOwl to have a say in their home life. These people weren’t against environmental stewardship; they were against corporate overreach. The language of our Virtual Office Environmental Stewardship Policy intentionally “encourages” our team members to adopt these practices, rather than requiring them to.

Carbon Footprint Offsetting Program

In September 2023, KnowledgeOwl became a Small Business Partner of CarbonFund.org.

We decided to offset based on the number of remote workers rather than tracking individual consumption. Similar to the Virtual Office Environmental Stewardship Policy, there were concerns about requiring individuals to report their environmental impacts verging on corporate overreach.

Carbonfund.org does an average calculation per team member to determine a recommended amount to offset. This approach felt like the right compromise between wanting to reduce our footprint while staying out of our team members’ home lives.

1% for the Planet and Eden Reforestation Projects

We are a proud member of 1% for the Planet and a partner of Eden Reforestation Projects. While we know these partnerships help cement our commitment to the environment and help us have a positive impact on the environment, in terms of the B Impact Assessment, these partnerships count towards our community impact, not our environmental impact.

Over the years, we’ve donated 1% of our total sales revenue each year to organizations like the Birds of Prey Foundation and the Petitcodiac Watershed Alliance.

What’s next?

Looking at the B Impact Assessment as a guide, much of the work ahead of us relates to figuring out how to monitor and measure our own energy usage and waste. To date, this hasn’t felt like the best use of our time as a small company, and we would love to find some kind of simple software solution that could help us with this.

As we network and meet with other B Corps and purpose-driven organizations, we are hoping to learn how we can be more intentional and impactful in this area.

I definitely struggle with figuring out how to have a meaningful impact in this area, and I’m hoping that by having more conversations about it, we can figure out how KnowledgeOwl can continue to grow in its capacity to be better for the planet. If you have any suggestions for us, we would love to hear them! Hoot!