This recap includes the following episodes and guests. 
Guest title reflects the guest's position at the time of the episode.

Recipes:

• Integrate Sustainability into Engineering Decisions

• Measure Environmental Efficiency in Ops

• ESG is a Framework, not a Limitation

• Tools, Tech, and Real-World Impact

• Taking Action

🥄 Reliable Sustainability

A Cookbook Chapter on Engineering with Purpose

Welcome to the first two episodes of Season 2, where we explore how site reliability engineering (SRE) can be a powerful lever in building a more sustainable future. This chapter is all about integrating sustainability into our engineering decisions and measuring environmental efficiency in operations. With insights from Christina Shim and Suzanne Livingston, we unpack how sustainability is no longer a side dish—it’s part of the main course.

🌱 What Does Sustainability Really Mean in Engineering?

SREs are in a unique position to lead this shift. From provisioning infrastructure to automating operations, every decision we make has a footprint. Christina reminds us, “You’re probably already doing sustainable things—you just don’t call them that.” And Suzanne adds, “We don’t provision too much, we don’t provision too little. It’s like Goldilocks provisioning.”

Sustainability in engineering is about being intentional—with our tools, our architecture, and our culture. It’s about reducing waste, increasing visibility, and aligning our practices with a broader purpose.

🛠️ Practical Tip:
Start by asking yourself and your team: What’s the environmental cost of our current architecture? Christina suggests looking at your entire ecosystem—people, processes, and technology. Suzanne recommends embedding sustainability into your engineering principles, just like you would with security or performance.

Suzanne builds on this by emphasizing the importance of software design: “It really starts with right at the beginning—what are you coding and what can you deliver into your software to help enable monitoring, dynamic scaling, and automation?”

Both guests agree: sustainability must be a design-time decision, not a post-launch patch.

🛠️ Practical Tip:

Start by reviewing your current architecture and asking: Is this built to scale efficiently? Suzanne recommends designing for observability and automation from day one. Christina suggests looking at your existing practices—you may already be doing sustainable things without realizing it.

📊 Measure Environmental Efficiency in Ops

🎯 Goal: Track and optimize infrastructure usage to reduce idle waste and over-provisioning.
Suzanne brings a practical lens to sustainability in operations. She introduces the concept of “Goldilocks provisioning”—not too much, not too little, just right. “We don’t provision too much, we don’t provision too little. It’s like Goldilocks provisioning.” This mindset helps reduce idle waste and optimize infrastructure usage. Christina adds that many companies are already doing sustainable things without labeling them as such: “Everyone wants to do things that require less energy. Why? Because energy costs money and you want to spend less.”

The takeaway? Efficiency and sustainability are often aligned—and measurable.

🛠️ Practical Tip:

Use tools like IBM Turbonomic or similar to dynamically adjust workloads based on real-time demand. Suzanne emphasizes the importance of monitoring and predictive scaling to avoid over-provisioning, especially during peak seasons.

🛠️ Tools, Tech, and Real-World Impact

🎯 Goal: Leverage automation, AI, and data to drive sustainable outcomes at scale.
From drones inspecting bridges to ESG dashboards replacing spreadsheets, both guests shared how technology is enabling real change. Suzanne shares how Sund & Bælt doubled the lifespan of a bridge using AI and drones, avoiding “750,000 tons of carbon emissions.” Christina points out that “a lot of companies are still trying to manage things by spreadsheet,” and that’s a huge opportunity for automation and AI to step in.

The message is clear: the tools are here—let’s use them.

🛠️ Practical Tip:

Map your team’s work to ESG goals, but don’t stop there. Christina recommends asking: How does this decision affect people, not just systems? Suzanne suggests aligning your engineering practices with your clients’ sustainability reporting needs.

🛠️ Practical Tip:

Run a sustainability jam or innovation challenge within your team. Suzanne highlights how grassroots ideas—like predicting incidents before they happen—can reduce waste and improve reliability. Christina encourages embedding sustainability into team rituals and decision-making.

💬 Let’s Talk About It

Here are a few questions to spark deeper conversations with your team or audience:

1. What would change if we treated sustainability metrics with the same urgency and visibility as incident response or uptime?
   → Are we prioritizing environmental impact in our dashboards, reviews, and retrospectives?

2. Where are we silently over-consuming—whether in compute, process, or culture—and what’s stopping us from fixing it?
   → Are we defaulting to “safe” over-provisioning instead of designing for efficiency?

3. How are we empowering every engineer, not just sustainability leads, to make decisions that are ethical, equitable, and environmentally responsible?
   → Is sustainability part of our team’s definition of done?

4. If you could delegate one manual, wasteful, or risky task to an intelligent agent today, what would it be—and what’s stopping you from empowering AI to take it on?
   What barriers—technical, cultural, or organizational—are holding back your next leap in sustainable automation?