14 DAY TRIAL // A group of Greenpeace members and supporters have recently paid a visit to Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco, US, but not because they were looking to deliver some Christmas presents in advance.
On the contrary, these people gathered in front of the company's headquarters to demand that Twitter green up its act by putting its dependence on dirty fuels behind it and embracing renewables instead.
This latest Greenpeace protest in San Francisco, US, was carried out shortly after the release of a report accusing Twitter of not being in the least open to the idea to chat about where it gets its energy from or about its energy efficiency policies.
The report in question was pieced together by Greenpeace, and it awards Twitter a great big “F” on its so-called green energy report card. Hence, environmentalists are now trying to convince the company to try harder and improve on its grade.
According to Business Green, the Greenpeace members and supporters that took part in the protest in San Francisco were accompanied by someone wearing a green Twitter bird costume and carried banners demanding eco-friendly Tweets.
By the looks of it, the protesters did not settle for just walking around the company's headquarters. On the contrary, they entered the building and distributed pocket-sized compostable eggs to whatever Twitter employees they chanced to cross paths with.
These eggs contained messages such as, “We love tweeting, but would love it more if it was green. Commit Twitter to 100 per cent renewable energy,” the same source informs. “We love using Twitter, but we want to use it knowing that our tweets are not hurting the environment,” Greenpeace senior IT analyst Gary Cook also stressed.
To prove just how committed it was to convincing Twitter to go green, the environmental group even went through the trouble to find role models for the company, just in case the latter was too busy helping people keep in touch with one another to take care of this problem itself.
Thus, Greenpeace argues that Twitter needs to become more like Facebook, Google, and Apple, all of which have promised to improve on their ecological footprint by having renewables alone power the giant data centers that they rely on in order to keep up and running.
Following this protest in San Francisco, a spokesperson for Twitter agreed to talk to members of the press, but merely said that the company was pushing “for even greater efficiency of operations” and that it would not dismiss “any constructive feedback that helps us get there.”
Still, odds are Greenpeace will not back off until the company announces clear-cut measures intended to cut the use of dirty fuels and promote energy efficiency. Otherwise put, it is to be expected that several other protests will follow.