Re: Question to candidates: eco-friendliness

[Niels De Graef <nielsdegraef gmail com>]

Hi Philip,

First of all, thanks for awareness on this issue.

As the board, I think we can make 2 areas of impact here: to add
(hard/soft) requirements to the travel policy and to give guidelines
for events. Whether the decisions we make should be considered as
rules/guidelines or hints will of course depend on how strictly we
enforce them. Hence, these shouldn't be too restrictive (or no-one
will follow them) nor without exceptions (because every situation is
different in its own right).

The first and most obvious aspect is to give extra
requirements/guidelines for the travel policy. One example is to ask
people to take public transport (train/bus/...) if the event is within
a fixed distance -decided by the board- of their home. As sponsors, we
should consider the possible extra cost of the train over other modes
of transportation. Valid motivations for the contrary exist (little to
no public transport available; big increases in travel time or
expenses; ...), but should become more of an exception than the rule.

For organisers of sponsored events, we can publish some useful
guidelines, such as always having to post online on how to get there
using public transport. Exceptions can exist here also, but we should
consider if we really want to go somewhere that requires everyone to
take a car.

For attendees of events/hackfests, we can make a small set of
"reminders" that can be used as a basis on events. As an example, we
can ask attendees to bring their own refillable cups/bottles (which is
useful when the venue provides a way of washing them). It might even
be nice to sell some GNOME-themed cups/bottles, which gives us a small
stream of revenue and gives people a cool accessoire.

Kind regards,
Niels

On Mon, Jun 3, 2019 at 7:11 PM Philip Withnall <philip tecnocode co uk> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Thanks for running for the board!
>
> What steps do you think the Foundation could take to reduce its
> environmental impact, and the environmental impact of the project as a
> whole?
>
> I’m asking in more of an organisational sense than a technical sense.
> It’s up to individual maintainers to ensure their software is not
> resource-hungry, etc.
>
> I imagine this is the kind of question where it’s easy to just say
> “yes, I care about environmental friendliness”, so I suggest you might
> want to reply with your ideas about things the board could do to reduce
> environmental impact — whether those things are big, small, incremental
> steps to reduce our physical resource usage, or fundamental changes to
> how we organise the project to reduce the impact of travel. It would be
> interesting to hear them all, and how feasible/practical you think any
> improvements are.
>
> Obviously, those who have already served on the board will have some
> insight to share about what the board already does, and concrete ways
> it could improve; hopefully this doesn’t disadvantage those who haven’t
> already served on the board.
>
> Ta,
> Philip
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