Pinterest has committed to purchasing 100% renewable electricity for its offices and has set a deadline of 2023 to reach this milestone. This will be coupled with ongoing efforts to reduce energy consumption at these sites.
The company’s headquarters will be one of the first to switch to 100% renewables through CleanPowerSF’s SuperGreen programme. Energy Attribute Certificates will be purchased for the company’s global real estate portfolio across cities like Chicago, Tokyo and São Paulo.
Pinterest will also prioritise programmes and projects that are located in the countries they are based and within the same year, the electricity was consumed. An emphasis will also be placed on supporting local community projects.
“We strive to create workspaces that nourish employees and are designed and operated in a responsible way,” Pinterest’s global sustainability lead Mia Ketterling said. “Powering our offices with 100% renewable electricity by 2023 is a step in our journey to build a better and more sustainable future for our employees and the global community.”
Pinterest is striving to ensure that it sources renewables locally where possible and to use office spaces that are certified by the likes of LEED, BREEAM, and Energy Star.
The company is also incorporating nature into its new builds. Pinterest has recently turned to biophilic design, which incorporates nature into the design stage of buildings and has already been utilised in a new office in Toronto and another facility that will open soon in Mexico City. Pinterest believes these design processes will help improve staff wellness alongside sustainability.
Climate misinformation
At the start of the year, Pinterest issued what it claimed was the first for a major social media platform, by introducing new guidelines aimed at ending the circulation of climate-related misinformation.
The changes mean that Pinterest will remove content that “denies the existence or impacts of climate change, the human influence on climate change, or that climate change is backed by scientific consensus”.
False or misleading information about climate solutions, and content that misrepresents data and reports from climate scientists, will also be removed.
Additionally, “harmful” false or misleading content around natural disasters and extreme weather events will no longer be allowed on Pinterest. These rules will apply to advertisements and to content that users post for free on their personal accounts. Users seeing content that breaches these rules are encouraged to report it to Pinterest.
Research published by Stop Funding Heat and the Real Facebook Oversight Board last November found that climate misinformation on Facebook attracts between 818,000 and 1.36 million views on the platform each day. This is far higher than the average number of daily visits made to Facebook’s Climate Science Centre, an initiative launched in 2020 to provide access to factual climate information.
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