At Schrödinger, we recognize the importance of environmental stewardship. This planet is our home, and none of us can live — or run a successful business — without it. While every individual can take action to protect the environment, companies are uniquely positioned to have a broader impact by embedding environmental sustainability into their mission and business strategy.
As Schrödinger’s head of Facilities and Operations, my team and I spend a lot of time thinking about our company’s overall environmental footprint and how each facility contributes to that footprint. Operational emissions from the energy required to cool, heat, and power buildings accounts for 28 percent of global emissions. That means leaders in my field have a tremendous opportunity to make a positive impact on the environment by ensuring the offices we oversee are energy efficient and the policies we implement are designed with environmental sustainability at the forefront.
This Earth Day, we are pleased to share Schrödinger’s Environmental Policy. This policy formalizes our dedication to operating responsibly wherever we do business, while maintaining inspiring and comfortable offices for our employees. As stated in our policy, Schrödinger is committed to:
- Complying with all applicable environmental laws, regulations, and other requirements relevant to our global operations
- Reducing our energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions
- Using recycled and recyclable materials
- Minimizing waste generation and water usage
- Promoting sustainable practices in our operations
We are achieving these goals through a number of activities across our offices globally. For example, at our New York headquarters, we regularly partner with Rescuing Leftover Cuisine, a non-profit that redistributes excess food to people experiencing food insecurity. We also purchase fruit and other pantry items from The Fruit Guys, an organization that donates 20 percent of their annual profits to relieve hunger and support small farms. In 2023 alone, Schrödinger’s orders helped The Fruit Guys donate 1,258 servings of fruit to those in need.
Our office in Mannheim, Germany is proud to be free of all single-use plastic products, and is powered by renewable energy. Our site in Hyderabad, India replaced individually packaged snacks with buffet options, and has also chosen to forgo single-use plastic consumables. Our Framingham, Massachusetts lab is 98 percent paper-free, thanks to the use of electronic lab notebooks. All of our offices across the globe recycle and compost, among many other site-specific environmentally beneficial activities. We also expanded our portfolio of greener workspaces, receiving LEED® Gold designations for three of our offices in the U.S. and anticipate achieving three more LEED® designations for our wet lab in Framingham and our offices in Seoul and Tokyo.
In 2023, Schrödinger developed our first greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory for our global operations in accordance with The Greenhouse Gas Protocol. With this established baseline in place, we now have the infrastructure for reporting and goal-setting moving forward.
While one company’s efforts won’t solve the environmental sustainability challenges facing our planet, these examples illustrate how environmental responsibility is ingrained in Schrödinger’s culture. Acting as good stewards of the planet creates shared value for our company and society. This notion is central to our Corporate Sustainability strategy, which we call VALUE2:
When we add value to the world, we create value for our company, and when we build value for ourselves, we generate value for the world.
We are still relatively early in our environmental sustainability journey, and we know there is more work to do. By launching a formal environmental policy that applies to all employees, contractors, and suppliers who work on behalf of Schrödinger, we aim to build upon our commitment to sustainability and make a lasting impact that extends well beyond Earth Day.
