It was once conventional wisdom that business and technology were in opposition to the environment and natural world, and that environmental activism was about opposition to economic development. This has changed. The consensus now is that new technology coupled with socially responsible business operations is the most promising and practical vehicle to solve the world’s environmental challenges.

Indeed, it’s clear that leading businesses often provide the leadership in developing new norms for individual, social and environmental policies that only subsequently become more broadly adopted by society at large and as governmental policy. What’s the reason? Such policies are not only good for the health of our businesses, but they also reflect the aspirations of our citizens. That’s why, at Oracle, sustainability is everyone’s business.

Your Sustainability Efforts

I am constantly impressed by the breadth of sustainability focused projects Oracle Volunteers participate in, including tree plantings, beach and park clean ups, ecology training and more. There are many opportunities to pitch in. Even if you can’t volunteer with us, there are small steps that each of us can take that amount to a big impact.

Below are three readily achievable “environmental best practices”–each of which can be aided by technology:

Sound like small potatoes? Well, Oracle is a large company with diverse and complex business operations that span the globe, yet the sum of the individual “carbon footprints” of all Oracle employees greatly exceeds that of Oracle as an enterprise. These individual, mindful decisions add up to a huge impact. Not only that, they save money.

Oracle‘s Sustainability Efforts

At Oracle, we manage our facilities and run our business responsibly, minimizing our environmental impact in as many ways as possible. We also develop products and services that support sustainable operations—our own and our customers’.

With that, I’m proud to share our 2017 sustainability report. Throughout it, you’ll read about initiatives in our facilities, data centers and supply chain that exemplify our commitment to sustainability and our progress toward ambitious goals.

In addition to our internal initiatives, this report addresses how Oracle technology helps other organizations better execute and measure their own sustainability initiatives. In collaboration with our partners, we provide sustainability solutions that can be easily integrated into our customers’ core business activities. Whether through business intelligence, the Internet of Things, smart utility grids, logistics network optimization or the hyper-efficient Oracle Cloud, we are in the unique position of being able to provide solutions that span the entire nexus of IT and sustainability business requirements.

Below are a few of our recent accomplishments:

As Oracle shifts its business to the cloud, we’re seizing the opportunity to design our hardware for the environment and contribute to a more circular economy.

I hope you enjoyed learning about what Oracle is doing to preserve the planet. If you have a question or would like to share feedback, please contact us at [email protected].

Happy Earth Day!

Jon Chorley

Jon Chorley is Chief Sustainability Officer and Group Vice President at Oracle.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.