I confess, one of the little things I love about working here are the free lattes. My morning ritual of the double-nonfat-latte-in-a-medium cup is a glorious thing. But one of the by-products –- 500 disposable cups going to the trash per hour at our headquarters alone –- is not. And each year the production of these same cups generates 50,000 lbs. of carbon. We have the power to change this.

Today, we’re hosting “Chuck the Cup” Day on four of our campuses to raise awareness about the environmental impact of our coffee habit and highlight the things we can do to create a more sustainable workplace. This is the brainchild of Kai Haley, a Yahoo! Green Team member who’s been obtaining a masters in sustainable design in her spare time. Frustrated by the waste, Kai focused her thesis on an analysis of disposable cup usage and behavior patterns. She and Melissa Mangini, another impassioned Green Team member, decided to do something about it.

Earlier in the week, Green Team volunteers hid mugs throughout campus, with a note to encourage Yahoos to take and use the mugs, or bring their own to work today. Anyone who comes to one of our coffee bars with a mug goes to the head of the line (think carpool/hybrid lane — we even installed “Fast Lane” decals on the floor). We’re also giving mugs to people who correctly answer green trivia questions. And we’ve put the attention-getting sculptures that Kai created for her thesis on our main lawn, each of them representing the number of coffee cups used in 15 minutes at our headquarters (124, in case you were wondering).

In the future, all of our coffee bars will be offering Yahoo! Green Team mugs as an option (no trivia question required) so we can make this Chuck the Cup ritual a daily thing. And maybe the next time you go get your fix, you can chuck your cup, too.”

Kate Gerwe
Senior Director, Marketing
Head of Yahoo! Green Team

Up to now, it has been impolite to talk about gas emissions in a cafeteria. But we’re hoping to change that. At Yahoo!, I have the pleasure of working with an extremely motivated and vibrant volunteer group of 200-plus employees around the world who make up our Yahoo! Green Team. Our mission is simple – to take action, big and small, to help Yahoo! reduce its carbon footprint. As part of this effort, today we installed a new “Yahoo! Green Screen” – an interactive energy monitoring display (touch screen) that shows employees our energy usage in real-time at our Sunnyvale headquarters. The plan is to roll out other green screens to more Yahoo! campuses over time.

Empowering green actions through our employees and across our business is something we take very seriously (we launched a consumer-friendly resource for all things green called Yahoo! Green and pledged to be a carbon neutral company last year).

The Green Screen, which uses the Building Dashboard technology by Lucid Design Group presents energy usage in an easy to understand way and gives anyone who approaches the touch screen kiosk the ability to play with the information. Data can be viewed in megawatt hours, tons of carbon, or dollars. So, for example, you can see how many pounds of carbon have been emitted per person on the Sunnyvale campus from our energy usage that day. Employees will also be able to see energy consumption across buildings and compare trends viewed over time. We’re displaying dozens of “Green Tips” too – such as how to take advantage of our award-winning commute options, or where to shop for green products online. In addition to being available in our cafeteria, the Yahoo! Green Screen will be available to all employees worldwide on our corporate intranet to engage participation through suggestions, providing feedback, and just taking part in their local offices.

So now, when we lower the thermostat by 2 degrees in one of our buildings, we can immediately see the effect on energy consumption (and even carbon output).

Our hope is that this opens a healthy dialogue about our energy usage and empowers our employees to be more aware of our impact on the environment, and engages them to take action in their own way. This is one of the small pieces that helps us continue to reduce our carbon footprint and serves as a reminder that any action, no matter how big or how small, does make a difference.

Kate Gerwe
Senior Marketing Director, Corporate Partnerships and Yahoo! Green Team Leader

Photo from Jeremy Johnstone.

The last time we heard from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), they were letting us know what they thought about our use of a primate in our Yahoo! Tech launch event (we apologized). This time, they’ve crowned us with a 2008 Proggy Award for having the most vegetarian- and earth-friendly corporate cafeteria. We feel proudly redeemed.

A Proggy recognizes “animal-friendly achievement in 21st century culture and commerce…contributing to a more humane life for our entire society.” Whether they realize it or not, the thousands of Yahoos fed by Bon Appetit Management Company in our headquarters cafeteria (known as “URLs”) and beyond are provided with made-from-scratch food choices that minimize our impact on the environment. We are availed with dozens of vegetarian and vegan options, organics galore, ingredients from local farms, antibiotic-free meats, sustainable seafood, and biodegradable to-go containers. The kitchen staff even saves the vegetable oil from our fryers to create biodiesel fuel.

While an award for a corporate cafeteria might not seem worthy of great fanfare, it illustrates a big theme we Yahoos care about — finding innovative ways to help the planet. Many of the earth-friendly details are a result of input from Yahoo!’s Green Team, a volunteer army of employees who keep their eyes open for small changes that can make a big difference.

Here’s a quick video tour of URLs with Chef Bob Hart. He didn’t cook for the Grateful Dead, but he serves a mean gardein.

Kate Gerwe
Yahoo! Green Team
Senior Director, Marketing, Corporate Partnerships

When Michele Madansky, our VP of corporate and sales research, approached me in the halls to play in the “1st annual” Google Yahoo! tennis tournament (cleverly called “The Battle Over the Net”), my initial response was, “No way!” I haven’t played tennis since my kids were born. And surely, if we were going to enter into any sort of competition with Google, we should recruit our Division I Harvard MBA over-achieving ringers to represent us (aren’t there a few of these somewhere at Yahoo!?). When she informed me that they had 40 people and we only had 11, my fear of semi-public humiliation lost to my fear of our not showing up to a competition with Google. So I agreed.

I arrived to the Stanford Tennis Stadium in Palo Alto, California, early Sunday morning (at least there was no traffic on typically log-jammed Highway 101). I passed by the requisite tub of water, Gatorade, and beer (true); walked past the stack of PowerBars, fresh fruit, and large sheet cake with Yahoo! and Google logos on the icing (also true); and checked in and got my T-shirt (Unwritten law: When more than 50 people gather, there is always a T-shirt).

The rules of play were simple — 5-minute warm-up, eight games played, no-add scoring. A very casual process of assigning two teams to a court, and I was off to my first of three matches. During each match, we exchanged the friendly banter of “What group are you in?” and “How long have you been at the company?” All agreed this was purely for fun and a good cause. (All of the proceeds went to help the East Palo Alto Tennis and Tutoring program).

Throughout the morning, I couldn’t help but notice that the average age of the Yahoos was at least 5 years over that of the Googlers. (Maybe our wisdom and experience would be an advantage over these youngsters — both on and off the court?) Google even had a real ringer with a home-court advantage — a woman who played on the Stanford tennis team and graduated in 2004 (making those of us who have already had our 20-year college reunions feel a bit, well… “experienced”).

But in the end, Yahoo! won — 163 games to 157 games. A narrow margin, but less than one percent so at least I can sleep soundly knowing there will be no drawn-out recount. But more than the win, I actually had fun. Sure, there was healthy competition. But there was no antagonism, no resentment, no “attitude” from either team. We laughed and joked and enjoyed good tennis (here’s the Flickr photoset as proof). The Net-net (sorry, I couldn’t help myself) — a fun time was had by all.

OK, now back to the trenches in the real battle over the Net…

Kate Gerwe
Senior Director, Marketing
Yahoo! Connected Life