Zero Carbon Footprints for the Future of the Working World
After around 25 years of building companies, I realized the most crucial aspect of my work; the people.
If there’s one thing the pandemic can teach me, it is remote working. I wrote about the importance of remote working even after the pandemic. I could not stop emphasizing the staff’s wellbeing while office-based. I am talking about promoting work/life balance to my team, where they will not need to waste both time and money to travel to work. They will have a better quality of life, which automatically increases happiness in the workplace. Better yet, you and your team will get new skills in being excellent online communicators while getting things done at work. It won’t be easy, but I know that we need to learn, adapt, and build a training system that prepares many for this future.
Remote working equals a significantly reduced carbon footprint.
But that’s one way to look at it. Let me give you a different perspective: Remote working equals a significantly reduced carbon footprint.
I used to travel halfway across the world for physical meetings. Each of the sessions would last for around one or two hours top, but the travel would obviously take me more than 20 hours. That would make more than 200kg of carbon emission! That’s a lot for just one meeting?
Do we still need to emit that much carbon when we are digitally connected, anytime, anywhere?
I outsourced my main office and myself to the Southeast Asian island of Bali, where travels are relatively short. It will not take longer than 20 minutes to travel from our home to our co-working space. Again, they can even work remotely whenever necessary. Despite all these, we still can get things done efficiently via digital platforms. For instance, my team and I conducted EX Venture Night twice so far, one by September last year, and the latest one was February 2021. EX Venture Night is the most significant clean technology (“cleantech”) venture capital night, which gathers promising cleantech startups to pitch before venture capitalists and industry professionals. The event usually is open for the public, where they can vote for their favorite companies and venture capitalists.
We reached out to the participants, industry professionals, and attendees via LinkedIn. We interacted personally with them and maintained excellent relationships. The February 2021 event managed to invite 800 more participants than the one back in September last year. The event grew to be more and more critically acclaimed by these professionals. EX Venture Europe is coming this summer!
Imagine these attendees have to travel halfway around the world to attend a 1,5-hour EX Venture Night. How much carbon footprint would we leave in the ozone?
Better quality staffing
Nowadays, my travel has been dramatically reduced by 99%, just because I changed my lifestyle and way of working. I switched my team of hundreds, centralized in physical office buildings, into working remotely from any part of the world.
When I was managing my offices out of the U.S., Japan, Germany, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, the operation cost for rentals and human resources were rather expensive. The price points varied, but I received only the low-quality employees in some of the world’s most expensive cities. We had to work around the clock to cover the cost, which essentially lowered my employees’ happiness levels, hence leaving things undone. Besides, the office operations, on top of the employees’ travel to work, left high carbon footprints in the ozone.
As I mentioned, I outsourced my main office and myself to the Southeast Asian island of Bali. Here, the cost is lower, with my employees spread worldwide, from Indonesia itself to Germany and Russia. I am now managing better quality employees, and the result of work is exemplary. We schedule three to eight calls with venture capitalists and investors daily, with whom we engage via LinkedIn. We have created the best LinkedIn performance marketing strategies, specialized in clean technology. We are currently connected with around 3,200 individuals out of 5,000 cleantech specialists in the market. The number had grown from the 600s back in June 2020. We bridge cleantech startups with business plans to scale up with interested investors in the industry!
We are connected to more great minds of the world.
The main EX Venture office sits at Tropical Nomad, a co-working space located in Canggu, Bali’s heart. For the first time in a decade, the EX Venture team is connected to the world’s great minds who are highly experienced in different fields; engineering, lifestyle, culinary, and even human resources. Our social circles grow more robust, and the connected people are high quality — this is something EX Venture has never done before!
We all sit in one space, and we all work together to create a sustainable future, as EX Venture aspires to achieve. We support each other, innovate, and improve each other’s businesses. This is something unattainable in a centralized working environment.
Unlocking a fully-functioning remote working environment
In the U.S., transportation contributes to greenhouse emissions. Maintaining conventional fossil fuel-based vehicles, along with a centralized working environment, is not sustainable for both the environment and time.
A fully-functioning remote working environment is possible, with daily communications can improve tight bonds among team members. And if I may say, even more, intimate bonds. I speak to my team members daily, getting their career aspirations while getting to know them personally. I tried to create chat groups to ease communications, where my team members can brainstorm and exchange their great ideas. Again, these are all done digitally.
As a cleantech practitioner myself, I advise turning a personal remote working space more carbon-friendly.
Adjust temperature control consistently.
On a tropical island, the use of air conditioning is high, and this inevitably utilizes a lot of energy. To reduce energy consumption, AC can be set consistently at 24 degrees, which requires lesser work from the compressor for a much shorter duration. Or, turn it off when not in use!
Make coffee at home.
This is not easy because I am a coffee drinker myself. Yet, I realize that takeaway coffee cups are typically made out of plastic or wax-lined paper. Remember, we already have the global issue of unmanaged waste!
LED light bulbs are better than normal ones
LED bulbs to use much lesser energy than incandescent bulbs, as it uses 75% less energy than standard light bulbs. I advise switching your bulbs to LED, as it’s cheaper and friendly to the environment. And turn it off when not in use.
Take digital notes.
You can help save the trees, which are solely responsible for sequestrating carbon from the environment. We need the trees! You also get to reduce the amount of office waste in the landfill. Besides, you will be able to easily search for your previous notes you have forgotten of existence.
How do you create a fully-functioning remote working environment? Please share it in the comment section below!
