In accordance with our Company Values and our Environmental Policy we are dedicated to acting in an environmentally conscious and sustainable manner on all levels of our company. By forming and running an email company we have made a conscious choice to help decrease paper based communication in favor of electronic messaging.

Both as an organization and on a personal level as human beings, we want to contribute to mitigating climate change by minimizing our energy and resource consumption and thereby reducing our environmental impact.

Renewable energy sources

Geirangerfjord and Seven Sisters waterfall (Wikimedia Commons)
Geirangerfjord and Seven Sisters waterfall
(From Wikimedia Commons)

All the electricity generated in Norway is from renewable power sources. Thanks to the abundance of precipitation and waterfalls in our country, 95% of the electricity came from hydroelectric power plants in 2018. The rest was generated from wind power (2.6%) and thermal power (2.4%).

Furthermore, our email service is hosted in a data center that sources 100% of its electricity from renewable energy. This means that our email servers run entirely on renewable energy — they basically run on water.

This is important because servers and data centers use a lot of electricity for data processing and cooling of computer components.

Knowing that our services are hydro-powered and environmentally sustainable is essential to Runbox and in harmony with our Company Values.

Recycling policy

Oslo provides an advanced recycling system, and we source separate food waste, paper, and plastic, glass, and metal packaging.

We reuse or donate obsolete servers whenever possible, and return outdated servers and other hardware to recycling centers which dismantle and recover their components.

Some components such as memory chips are reused in other products, while metals such as copper, aluminum, lead, and gold are smelted and used in new electronics.

Waste that can’t be reused or recycled is converted into electrical or thermal energy for heating.

Telecommuting

As an Internet based organization, Runbox makes extensive use of telecommuting in our day to day operations.

While Runbox is headquartered in Oslo, our team is spread across 3 continents. By employing several online communication technologies such as IRC, wikis, video conferencing, and of course email, much of our work occurs via the Internet without the need for us to meet in person.

This also allows Runbox to have the best people involved regardless of where they happen to be in the world.