Greenpeace flew a blimp over Silicon Valley today to champion tech companies that have gone emerald green and shame those who are more of a tea green. The latter? Amazon, Twitter, Netflix and Pinterest.
“Apple, Facebook and Google are racing each other to build a greener online world, and that’s a race that we all win, since it means a greener offline world for everyone too,” said Greenpeace Senior IT Analyst Gary Cook. “Amazon, Twitter, Pinterest and Netflix can still join the vanguard of the green internet and avoid permanently chaining their fast-growing services to dirty energy if they commit to powering their operations with 100% renewable energy now.”
Wait, Twitter has a garden on its roof. And Pinterest has, like, employees who ride bikes. Surely they're all verdigris, aren't they? Not so, according to Greenpeace. (No shade, techies! Why, just this morning I tossed away a compostable carton into the trash. It happens.)
"At Greenpeace we love using Twitter and Pinterest, but we want to use them knowing they're not hurting the environment," David Pomerantz, Greenpeace Press Officer, explains to SFist. "Right now both companies are using rapidly growing amounts of electricity to power the data centers that store all of our Tweets and Pins, and most of that electricity for both companies is coming from polluting sources of energy like coal and gas. Facebook committed to 100 % renewable energy, and now is well on its way to that goal. We think Twitter and Pinterest can do the same."
Based on a report Greenpeace released on Wednesday, Twitter uses only 21 % clean energy for its data centers. Pinterest, as a customer of Amazon Web Services, uses only 15% clean energy. Unlike Facebook, neither Twitter nor Pinterest have made any commitments to renewable energy, according to Greenpeace.
And just to show you Greenpeace isn't only about wagging its finger, today's airship also tipped its hat to companies doing well. Behold:
