Greening the Generations: The new corporate cool

BILLY: Parties! Golf! World travel! That's what my dad did as an executive. He brought back awesome souvenirs, but I don't recall 'green' entering his corporate equation. 'Course, that's all changed now. Greg, tell the people about our trip to that kingdom of corporate cool in RTP. Not the volley ball courts and the tasty cafe, but the green stuff.

GREG: Oh, you mean the City of Tomorrow...Today! Cisco, more than most companies we have seen, is rolling up its sleeves to not only make the way they do business a little greener, but to help the rest of us make our businesses more sustainable. Rob Rolfsen, head sleeve roller and directors of sustainability, converses face to face with the world daily without even leaving the Cisco campus. Here, Rob answers our questions and sheds some compact fluorescent light onto the best ways each of us can work harder and more responsibly ...

BILLY: Rob, do you ever feel under a whole lot of pressure to be perfect? You're one of Cisco's key sustainability people -- what if someone sees you slip and toss a plastic bottle into a regular trash can? Adios, Roberto?

ROB: LOL, if I ever do slip, I would hope they would toss me in the garbage can! Just kidding, no one is perfect and everyone has good ideas, so we are always looking for things we can do better or differently to minimize our impact on the environment and not toss anything, or anyone, away.

GREG: Business people travel a lot, and that means a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. But you showed us a fantastic Telepresence conference room on your campus. Now, you don't have to travel, you can just tune in your customers or colleagues on the TV. Will Telepresence conquer the world, and what does that mean to all of us?

ROB: I sure hope so. Cisco's Telepresence has already changed my life in that I used to travel two and sometime three weeks a month, but now, using Cisco's Telepresence I can not only save GhG and travel costs, but also be more productive AND be home to spend time with my family. What I would love to see next is Telepresence in the home so those of us who are not from Raleigh can see our families and friends in other parts of the country. For example, last fall I brought my son with me to work and showed him a Telepresence room and before I could even explain how it is used, he said, "Wow, so that means we can have Thanksgiving dinner with Nana!" It is so simple, even kids get it and can see the value and potential future implications.

GREG: Hmmm. Nana never invited us over for Thanksgiving. Anyway, can you put a vanity filter on Telepresence? You know, to make us look a little more tan?

ROB: Great idea guys, maybe we can slim you down, too - if you ever have Thanksgiving dinner with Nana, you will know what I mean.

BILLY: Well, Greg and I combined weigh about 150 pounds (with shoes), so be careful with that Slimerizer. OK, so Cisco has committed to reducing its green house gas emissions by 25%. That's a lot. How will you do it and what can other companies do right away?

ROB: Yes, this 25% GhG reduction goal by 2012 is a lot. It is an absolute goal, meaning that no matter how much Cisco grows, we will reduce our emissions by 25% from 2007 levels by 2012. Thus, this is a very aggressive goal. Also, not just companies, but individuals too should look at what they can do to minimize their impact on the environment. At Cisco, we have determined our most energy intensive and greenhouse gas intensive sites, which due to the nature of our business tend to be engineering labs and data centers and we are doing things like redesigning their physical lay out to be as energy efficient as possible. The analogy is if you have a glass of milk and want to keep it cold, do you turn down the AC in your home or do you put the glass of milk in the refrigerator. That is the kind of thinking we want to embed in our lab and data center physical design.

Also, we are looking to redesign our products to make them use less energy and put out less heat. We are also looking at energy efficiency projects in our facilities, making better use of our facilities through mobility and Cisco Connected Workplace, educating our employees on what they can do to help Cisco be more sustainable, seeking LEED certification for a number of our sites and incorporating LEED concepts into our site selection decision matrices and into our design and maintenance guidelines . We are also putting sustainability concepts into our lease terms (since we lease a large percentage of our sites), continuing to seek to reduce travel via Telepresence, WebEx (also part of Cisco) and other forms of online collaboration, as well as greening our energy supply. This greening of our energy supply is reflected in our # 7 ranking on the EPA List of Fortune 500 companies with 51% of our US energy and 78% of our European energy coming from renewable sources. We are also doing many other things across the company ranging from alternative transportation support in many sites, reducing bottled water consumption by deploying filtered water solutions, encouraging hybrids and electric cars by providing preferred parking and charging stations for electric cars here in RTP, etc.

GREG: Can't wait to see RTP buzzing with electric cars. For now, saving energy is key. But my house is full of gadgets and gizmos that stay on all the time. Is some smarty somewhere-- maybe at Cisco -- trying to change that?

ROB: Absolutely, keep in mind Scientific Atlanta, which makes your cable TV set top box, is part of Cisco and thus, like all Cisco products, we are looking to reduce the energy consumption and heat output of these devices. Linksys, which makes your wireless home router, is also part of Cisco and we are making similar efforts there. That being said, the best advice for now is to put these gadgets and gizmos on a power strip which you can turn on and off and avoid the phantom power they use while not in use.

SO, THAT'S WHAT CISCO HAS TO SAY. HOW ABOUT YOU? READY FOR TELEPRESENCE, ETC.? SOUND OFF ...