The Lokalise ESG report

As we celebrate Earth Day, we’re proud of how we prioritized sustainability over the last 18 months, balancing our growth ambitions with environmental, social, and governance responsibilities. Our first annual ESG Report highlights the range of initiatives we undertook, including a Carbon Neutrality pledge and support for various causes. It details how we Lokalisers were empowered to drive change, firmly backed by our founders and leadership team.

This report helps us reflect on what we’ve achieved and what we could do better. We’re publishing it to serve as an inspiration to other tech companies. You don’t have to be big to make a difference.

Environmental initiatives

In 2021, a group of Lokalisers interested in sustainability initiatives gathered together to discuss how to become a more environmentally sustainable company. Within weeks, a group spread across nine countries organized their efforts to research the topic, interviewed sustainability experts, and calculated our carbon footprint. The work gave us the confidence to create a plan for a carbon-neutral Lokalise, which we pitched to our founders and the rest of the management team. 

Many companies make these pledges for 2025 or 2030. The feedback from our pitch was, “Why couldn’t we do this today?” So we did it, today. One of our company values is, “Take ownership. Optimize for impact.” The journey to carbon neutrality is just one example of how our team lives our values. 

Fully remote

Lokalise is proud to be a fully remote company. Many employees prefer the remote way of working due to the flexibility, saving time from commuting, and being able to work in an environment that fits each individual. Furthermore, remote work might have a positive impact on the environment. 

Here are some of the environmental benefits: 

• Lower power consumption – It is no secret that offices require a significant amount of energy consumption such as, but not limited to, heating, cooling, lights, computers, and other electronic equipment. A remote working structure changes that. When employees work from home, their personal energy consumption may increase, but the overall power consumption goes down. In addition, employees may be more inclined to power-saving habits when they are using their own power sources.
• Reduced greenhouse gas emissions – working from home does not only save time but also transportation costs and CO₂ footprint from a daily commute to work.
• Better air quality – reduced gas emissions mean cleaner air.
• Less paper usage – while in the office we tend to use more paper than actually required, remote work forces us to embrace paperless ways of working and to read and share documents online, using virtual collaboration tools.
• Less use of plastic – plastic cutlery, cups and packaging are something common in the office environment. Work-from-home employees use their reusable inventory on a daily basis. 

Carbon footprint

Although Lokalise is a fully remote company, which leads to multiple environmental benefits (related but not limited to day-to-day commute), we still gather for offsites, team events, workshops and strategic meetings. Like every tech company, we use a number of servers to store and run our tech, which leads to significant energy consumption. 

In 2021, Lokalise decided to monitor and offset our overall carbon footprint. Since then, we have calculated our carbon footprint on a quarterly basis and offset our environmental impact on an annual basis.

Travel carbon footprint

Here is our 2022 carbon footprint related to travel, calculated for both air and train travel:

• Q1: 18,991.76 kg CO₂
• Q2: 19,082.20 kg CO₂
• Q3: 178,236.03 kg CO₂ – significantly more, since Lokalise had an offsite gathering in  Portugal
• Q4: 13,413.7 kg CO₂

This represents a total of 229,723.69 kg CO₂ for travel. 

Energy used for servers 

Lokalise operates with 64 servers (both cloud and on-premise). Twenty-nine of them operate on green energy. The carbon footprint of the servers is as follows: 

• Cloud server using 100% green electricity: 160 kg CO₂e / year and server
• Cloud server using non-green electricity: 458 kg CO₂e / year and server
• On-premise or data center-server using 100% green electricity: 320 kg CO₂e / year and server
• On-premise or data center-server using non-green electricity: 916 kg CO₂e / year and server

Carbon Removal Using Stripe Climate 

To prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change, the world will likely need to both radically reduce the new emissions we put into the air, and remove carbon already in the atmosphere. Lokalise is the first major translation management platform to go carbon neutral by joining the Stripe Climate initiative. Stripe Climate works with Frontier, Stripe’s in-house team of science and commercial experts committed to carbon removal technologies and making carbon removal purchases. Lokalise contributed approximately $150,000 in 2022 to the Stripe Climate initiative, which accounts for the removal of approximately 987 tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere. 

Initiatives closer to home

On top of our environmental endeavors, to make the world a better place to live in, I’m really proud of the work our team has done to make Lokalise a better place to work:

• Our Veganuary was a huge success
• We went to great lengths to support our Ukrainian colleagues at the outbreak of war in their country
• Increasing diversity has been a priority for the leadership team
• We now offer comprehensive, confidential mental health and workplace support throughout Plumm
• Improved transparency across the business

You can read more about these initiatives in the full report.

Looking to the future

At Lokalise, we believe in companies being responsible for their overall impact, beyond the product or service they provide. Reporting our ESG performance helps us maintain focus on our role in society and highlights the progress we’ve made, while also recognizing areas for improvement. Moving forward, we’ll maintain our commitment to carbon neutrality, launch a Volunteer Month Initiative, and work on improving diversity and equal access to opportunities within our company.

Although our action plan may evolve, we’re excited to brainstorm new projects for the Sustainability Team to implement throughout 2023 and beyond. Our goal is to continuously progress towards becoming a more sustainable and responsible company, and we look forward to reporting on our achievements in the coming years.