By Genie Gratto, Senior Project Manager
In a thought-provoking article in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, Michael Pollan asks the question: Why bother about climate change at all? The problem is too big to address one person at a time, one action at a time. “There are so many stories we can tell ourselves to justify doing nothing, but perhaps the most insidious is that, whatever we do manage to do, it will be too little too late,” Pollan says.
So it may be, but Pollan advocates for taking small actions, nonetheless, and argues passionately for everyone to plant something from seed, nourish it with homemade compost, and grow even a little of their own food. Gardening-particularly kitchen gardening-is such an earth-affirming activity that it can’t help but make the doer think differently about the natural world and their impact on it. As a gardener myself, I can’t help but agree.
Here at Geonetric, we’ve been taking steps over the past year to minimize our impact on the planet, as well. All-company emails sent by everyone from our CEO, Eric Engelmann, to members of our project management and sales teams provide gentle reminders: turn off your monitors before leaving for the day; make sure all the lights are out if you’re the last one out the door; avoid buying endless plastic bottles of water in lieu of safe, non-BPA-containing reusable bottles.
We recycle paper, cardboard, plastic and the hundreds of empty cans of soda we go through each week (Trust me…all that software development requires an immense amount of caffeine to fuel it!), and many of those of us who do not live in Cedar Rapids try to carpool to keep down our fuel consumption levels.
Why bother? Because we’re not just a company that wants to make great software for healthcare organizations. We also care about the world in which we make that software, and, one small action at a time, we’re trying to think beyond our office walls about the impact we make as we do our work.
