#40 - Triggering action in green software: a Nordic perspective with Satu Heikinheimo and Janne Kalliola
Update: 2024-06-04
Description
🤔 Why do we do so little to decarbonize software despite already knowing so much?
🎙️ In this episode, Gael Duez is joined by Janne Kalliola, author of "Green Code," together with Satu Heikinheimo, Planet Diplomats’ founder, to discuss how to trigger more actions among Tech people to reduce the carbon footprint of our code.
🌍 Both being based in Finland, a nice side-benefit of their exchange was exploring how the Nordic countries handle the environmental footprint of digital technology.
Key takeaways:
🏃 trend of employees considering resigning if their company's values don't align with their own,
🤝 importance of collaboration among multidisciplinary teams to create sustainable digital products and services,
⚙️ concept of carbon-neutral software and the choice of focusing mostly on energy consumption, and
💡 Nordic approach to trust, self-organization, and low hierarchy in fostering psychological safety and agency for individuals to drive sustainable initiatives
❤️ Subscribe, follow, like, ... stay connected the way you want to never miss our episode, every two Tuesday!
🎙️ In this episode, Gael Duez is joined by Janne Kalliola, author of "Green Code," together with Satu Heikinheimo, Planet Diplomats’ founder, to discuss how to trigger more actions among Tech people to reduce the carbon footprint of our code.
🌍 Both being based in Finland, a nice side-benefit of their exchange was exploring how the Nordic countries handle the environmental footprint of digital technology.
Key takeaways:
🏃 trend of employees considering resigning if their company's values don't align with their own,
🤝 importance of collaboration among multidisciplinary teams to create sustainable digital products and services,
⚙️ concept of carbon-neutral software and the choice of focusing mostly on energy consumption, and
💡 Nordic approach to trust, self-organization, and low hierarchy in fostering psychological safety and agency for individuals to drive sustainable initiatives
❤️ Subscribe, follow, like, ... stay connected the way you want to never miss our episode, every two Tuesday!
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Learn more about our guest and connect:
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Satu and Janne’s sources and other references mentioned in this episode:
- Green Code
- LUT University
- SE4GD
- 2023 Net Positive Employee Barometer
- Code from Finland
- Planet ambassador
- The psychology of sustainability with Iida Mäkikallio
Transcript
When we talk about agency, we need stories. We need to hear what somebody has already done. Otherwise, how is it possible?
Hello everyone. Welcome to Green IO with Gaël Duez. That's me. In this podcast, we empower responsible technologists to build a greener digital world, one byte at a time. Twice a month on a Tuesday, our guests from across the globe share insights, tools and alternative approaches, enabling people within the tech sector and beyond to boost digital sustainability. And because accessible and transparent information is in the DNA of Green IO, all the references mentioned in this episode, as well as the transcript will be in the show notes. You can find these notes on your favorite podcast platform and of course on our website, greenio.tech
Sometimes, and I do mean sometimes, nice connections happen via social networks. When Janne Kalliola, Exove CEO, reached out to me to chat about his book Green Code, I was happily surprised to discover his work and a bit ashamed that it flew under my radar so far. Our discussion went from code efficiency to the Nordics way of deploying sustainability. Janne being based in Helsinki, Finland, and it made me curious about local specificities once again. So, after Latin America, Singapore and soon Japan, let's focus on another geographical area to see how the Nordic countries handle the environmental footprint of digital technology. A sector where they weigh significantly more than the size of their population would suggest around 26 million if we gather Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.
And I also wanted another point of view, less technical and with a clear focus on organizational challenges to bring sustainability within the IT sector and beyond. Hence our second guest, Satu Heikinheimo, longtime founder of Helsinki design company, who launched Planet Diplomats last year. So welcome, Janne and Satu, thanks a lot for joining Green IO today.
Thanks for having us. It's a pleasure.
Thank you. It's fantastic to be talking about very important topics with you today.
Yeah, thanks a lot. And you know, before we deep dive into green coding and enabling action in the Nordics way, I'd like to understand better what triggered both of you to become more planet aware, I would say. And Sato, you mentioned to me in an earlier conversation that you were a climate quitter. At first I thought you meant that everything was lost and we cannot save us from the massive force calming climate disruption. But actually, I got it all wrong, didn't I?
Yes, a little bit. Okay, so two things. So what got me into sustainability was actually already a long, long time ago. More than ten years ago, I was studying service design and business like strategic design. And then I had an opportunity to do my Master's thesis, actually quite near where you, well, not near, but near where you live in Zanzibar. And I was examining how you can use design tools or can you use design tools to solve systemic problems. So that was like my starting point. And then I realized that sustainability is my thing and there is so much to do, and with design skills we can make a difference. And then ten years, or more than ten years passed, I worked in IT and in very many different sectors. And then I realized that I actually want to do only sustainability. And that wasn't possible in my current position, like previous positions. So that's why I am now calling myself a climate quitter since last fall. And that means that I am fully dedicated to fight climate change, create businesses and services that are fully embracing sustainability, the opportunities within sustainability, and to create a better and more regenerative future for all of us.
And actually, you're not the only one. I think there is a significant trend of people changing jobs.
Absolutely. There have been lots of studies made recently where I can see that I'm not the only one. So, for example, there was this study made by Paul Polman. It's called the 2023 Net Positive Employee Barometer. And they were researching the climate quitting phenomena and it seems that it's major and we're not really talking about that much. According to the study, nearly half of the employees, I think there were like 4000 employees interviewed or answering in the survey, were considering resigning their job if the values of the company did not align with their own values. That's major, isn't it?
Pretty impressive. That's something claiming it and then something doing it. So congratulations for doing it.
Janne, did you have an uh huh moment? Or was it more something consistent over your professional career and personal path?
Janne Kalliola 05:50
I think that I had like two moments that were sort of like a pinch moment, like in a war, that there was one from our employees, from Exove, that their demands for the sustainability, especially social sustainability, and the diversity, equality and inclusion were getting stronger. And as I'm a middle aged white male from a developed country, then there was a lot for me to learn. So that was one sort of starting point that there's something here that I need to understand better. And then the other one was that I'm the Chairman of the Board of Code from Finland association, and there we had a sustainability initiative. And then I went to Finnish think tank Sitra to discuss the ecological impact of IT, to understand it more, and then found out that everything is not right, that it actually is. There's a lot to fix. And then I started to think that, okay, I will do something about it on gold from the Finland side. Then I started to talk about it and hoped that somebody would pick up the topic and do something. After doing that for a while, I found out that actually nobody is really moving because of that. I'm b
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