Mit Smr Case Study

Facebook, a $390 B market capitalization Nasdaq listed American company, is not new to most people.  Its social platform connects 1.9 billon people from around the globe. It allows free flow of information and connects friends as well as family socially. Facebook’s revenue primarily comes from end user advertising – by intelligently using user’s activity to show most relevant advertisement.

In its mission to connect more people than even and at the same time to build a information hub, Facebook needs to leverage multiple resources – Employees, Buildings - with best end user experience facilities, Computing systems and Data centers to host information. It generates almost 600 GB of data every day. To prevent any adverse impact to the environment with its information centric business model, Facebook realized that it needs to take accountable actions. With that objective, Facebook created a Sustainability platform (https://sustainability.fb.com) to make its commitment to environment public.

In 2017 ClickClean report  (http://www.clickclean.org/) (Figure A below) that rates internet companies on their green energy usage, Facebook has been rated “A”. Facebook is transforming its datacenters to use only renewable energy, re-architecting building to use renewable sources for energy, collaborating with REBA, RE100, and Open Compute Project, to enable smooth and sustainable commute for employees, recycling and composting responsibly, creating co-habitats for wildlife as well as partnering with local communities to learn and share on environmental impact. The graphic Figure B below depicts Facebook’s annual carbon emissions compare with other common daily activities.

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Figure A

Facebook’s commitment to sustainability is unquestionable and, in fact, commendable considering fewer initiatives by its competitors on this front. Though it has taken a right step forward, there are still concerns on few fronts particularly technology disposal. As more and more computing hardware becomes obsolete every year, Facebook hasn’t yet published any information on how it will tackle the electronic waste sustainably and ethically.

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Figure B