#61 Scaling Green Software with Anita Schüttler

Update: 2025-07-08

Description

What does it take to go beyond raising awareness in green software? To avoid checking just boxes? What is required to scale green software practices in a company?

To discuss these issues, Gaël Duez welcomes Anita Schüttler on this episode “from the trenches”. Anita is a seasoned software engineer and expert on digital sustainability. She works as Head of Sustainability at IT company neuland. Besides, she is a co-chair of the German Bundesverband Green Software, an auditor for the Blue Angel for software and a Champion of the Green Software Foundation.

Together, they covered many topics including:

The Formation of the Bundesverband Green Software
The CO2 Challenge Project
Scaling Green Software Initiatives & measuring its success
The Challenges in Certification Processes
The Emotional Roller Coaster of Nonprofit Initiatives

And much more!

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Anita’s sources and other references mentioned in this episode:

Transcript (auto-generated)

Anita Schüttler 00:07

In IT, you unplug your servers or you do a deployment and the emissions are gone. And this is so great. I think we actually do have a common ground to be ambitious.

Gael Duez 00:26

Hello everyone, welcome to Green.io. I'm Gael Duez and in this podcast, we empower responsible technologists to build a greener digital world, one bite 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. What does it take to go beyond raising awareness in green software. To avoid just checking boxes such as inviting a speaker, organizing a digital collage workshop or training some volunteers in eco design. What is required to scale green software practices in a company? To answer these questions, I'm delighted to welcome Anita Schuttler on the show. Anita is a seasoned software engineer and expert on digital sustainability. She works as of Sustainability at IT company Newland. Besides, she is a co-chair of the German Bundeswehrband Green Software, an auditor for the Blue Angel for Software and a champion of the Green Software Foundation. Wow! But what convinced me is Fiona Leinbundgut, our MC at GreenHire Munich this year, introducing Anita to me as a die-hard Green Software engineer. And after exchanging with Anita, I had to add die-hard Green Software Engineer scaling Green IT from the trenches because she shared several real life examples which were truly inspiring and which she will share with you now. Hi Anita, thanks a lot for joining Green IO today.

Anita Schüttler 02:18

Hey Gail, it's so great to be here, thank you.

Gael Duez 02:19

You're welcome, you're welcome. You know, when Fiona introduced us. She mentioned that you were hands-on green IT practitioners. I think she said something like hardcore green software practitioner or something like that. So I was like, oh, great. We're going to talk with a lot of use cases from someone being actually in the trenches. And you know how I love this sort of episodes with feedbacks from people doing things, facing challenges and sharing what works, what doesn't work, et cetera. But then we had a discussion preparing the visit and you mentioned the Bundesverband Green Software. Yes, I managed to pronounce it properly. And I was like, oh my God, I wasn't aware how active this association was and actually launching a pretty big project. So I've got a few questions for you. And if you don't mind, I would love to start with this topic. And maybe my first question would be, how did you join this association?

Anita Schüttler 03:23

Yeah. So it's called Bundesverband and it sounds really German. I know you can just call it Green Software Association. Basically, what did the Green Software Foundation does worldwide? We aim to do on a German level. So the Bundesverband is pretty young still actually, it was founded last year. the story goes like this, there were some companies who were already working together on this green software topic and they wanted to accelerate what they were doing, they wanted to bring it out to the people and this whole thing didn't get much traction and at some point they said, maybe we have to think this like two steps bigger. Why not create a Bundesverband? this thing, it's, it's, yeah, it's an association. So it sounds like something from the German government or so, but it's not, it's companies coming together and doing this. And we have this for several fields, like AI is one of them as well, or can have any other. And I was already talking to those who were thinking about founding such an association. We were somewhat being friends with each other or becoming friends. And when they said, let's found this association, I said, we want to be part of this. We want to be one of those companies that join as the first ones. So with my company, neuland and… I asked everyone internally and people were actually pretty excited about this. To sum it up, we're actually a founding member of the Bundesverband Green Software.

Gael Duez 05:35

Congratulations. Can individuals join this association or is it only company membership?

Anita Schüttler 05:38

It's meant as a company membership, but we do have members who are single person companies. So NGO also is fine as well. Or if they're in academics, they can join.

Gael Duez 6:00

Okay. You were already doing a lot of green IT stuff. What was the motivation for you more personally to join them?

Anita Schüttler 6:02

Yeah, I was actually really excited about this because it felt like, okay, now we got a movement and now we have something that we can show to everyone and where we can, uh, put up some big signs and tell people about what green software is. And it looks more official, so to say. Yeah. And it looks like a bigger thing. And we really noticed this when, as soon as we had this association, there was a different kind of speed behind this and more of a push behind this. yeah, that really accelerated a lot of things and moved it to another level than it was before.

Gael Duez 06:42

And that might be my thank you, Captain Obvious moment. But why did you have this need to create a German association? Why not, for instance, creating a chapter of the Green Software Foundation? What drives you to go more in-depth at the local level?

Anita Schüttler 07:09

Yeah, so Germany is actually pretty active also in terms of the Green Software Foundation. For example, we have the most Green Software champions of any country within the Green Software Foundation champions. We also have several meetups. I always join the one at Karlsruhe every month because it's online and everyone can join bit of an advertisement to join this Green Software Meetup. And still it felt like the Green Software Foundation was too far away. I think it's very focused on the English speaking countries or English speaking community. it's a pity because there's so much going on in Germany and there's so many people who are interested in this and really doing things. So we wanted to gather those and get in more companies and people to join us and do something without maybe even without having this barrier of the language. Because when you tell people to say this in English or to communicate in English, many are put off then if they are not this familiar with Eng