Google leading the way?

 I think a great example of corporate social responsibility is what Google has done in terms of clean efficient data centers and energy usage. The firm is known for its creativity, and does everything from alternative energy R&D to goat aided lawn mowing! (see image below of one of Google's fields)





The search giant takes efficiency very seriously as demonstrated by their site:

 How efficient is our infrastructure? Google-designed data centers use about half the energy of a typical data center. As a result, the energy used per Google search is very small; to be precise, we currently use about 1kJ (0.0003 kWh) of energy to answer the average query. This translates into roughly .2g of CO2 (for non-metric users, that's 0.007 ounces). Not only is energy use very small, web searches often take the place of more carbon- and time-intensive activities, such as driving a car to a library or spending hours navigating shopping malls.

To put these numbers into perspective, we've calculated the CO2 emissions of some everyday activities and compared them to "Google searches":

Activity	Google searches
CO2 emissions of an average daily newspaper (100% recycled paper)	850
A glass of orange juice	1,050
One load of dishes in an EnergyStar dishwasher	5,100
A five mile trip in the average U.S. automobile	10,000
A cheeseburger	15,000
Electricity consumed by the average US household in one month	3,100,000