Meet 2 ServiceNow employees who embody sustainability

The climate crisis and sustainability can be daunting. It’s not always easy to be solution-oriented, but two ServiceNow employees are doing just that. Despite the obstacles, they wake up every day with the intention to make a difference in preserving our planet.

Zero waste

Before the pandemic, Advisory Solution Consultant Andy M. and his fiancée began a zero-waste mission. A vegetarian for many years and the owner of an electric vehicle, Andy was no stranger to the eco-friendly lifestyle. He went through his house and replaced many single-use plastic items with glass. He also started frequenting a local zero-waste shop in his neighborhood of Chelmsford, UK.

A zero-waste shop aims to eliminate packaging and food waste by selling package-free goods, such as dry food and liquid soap, for customers to refill their own glass bottles or tins.

In January, the shop announced it would be closing its doors—unless someone stepped up to take it over. “I said, ‘A chat can’t hurt,’” Andy recalls. One thing led to another, and he and his fiancée, along with a friend of theirs, became the shop’s new owners.

Andy’s favorite part is the friendly, eco-conscious customers. He’s also thrilled by the positive results he’s already seen. “Over 700 liters (about 185 gallons) of liquid were ordered into the shop in one month, and that works out to saving about 1,700 400 mL (about 14 oz.) single-use plastic bottles,” he says. “If you push that out to a whole year, we’re looking at [saving] closer to 20,000 400 mL plastic bottles or single-use bottles.”

Big data, big energy savings

As a data center operations management director, Tony K.’s goal is to make ServiceNow data centers the most trusted, secure, and efficient in the world. To reach that goal, “we knew we had to get back to the classroom and get educated in the subject of sustainability,” he says.

After engaging in rigorous training, Tony and his team in Staines, UK, learned how to build an entire sustainability strategy. They were able to pinpoint where they could reduce packaging and recycle materials while maximizing their operations.

The team now live-tracks the energy consumption of the company’s cooling systems, which are used to maintain proper temperature of complex networking hardware. 

“The data center cooling infrastructure is set to a point where our systems won’t overheat,” Tony explains. “With the right measurement instruments in place, we can ensure that there’s not too much cooling, which effectively is a waste of carbon emissions that we can save on.”

These energy savings add up to help reduce ServiceNow's carbon footprint—and the footprints of our customers.

“When a customer chooses the Now Platform, they’re choosing our hardware and our data centers,” Tony adds. “Our carbon-usage story becomes the customer’s carbon-usage story. That means we must do everything right.”

Thanks to Tony’s team and Andy’s small business, the planet is in good hands. “Don’t do nothing just because you can’t do everything,” Andy advises. “You’re still doing something. You’re still doing your bit.”

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