Month: April 2023

CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 20, 2023 /3BL Media/ – Discovery Education and USC Shoah Foundation today announced a new virtual experience – The Courage to Act Virtual Field Trip – showing students in grades 6-12 the power of student voice and leadership to effect change. This virtual field trip is part of Teaching with Testimony, a program that connects students to the power of testimony from the survivors and witnesses of genocide, inspiring students to find their voices and act for a better future.

Premiering April 27 at 1 PM ET and available on-demand, The Courage to Act Virtual Field Trip shares the stories of young people standing up as individuals, groups or through community action to enact change locally and globally. Students meet a peer who has created a project that stands up against injustice, hear about survivors of the Holocaust, and learn from community activists.

“Every day, young people are out there changing the world for the better, raising their voice and being true to their beliefs,” said Lesly Culp, Interim Director of Education & Outreach at USC Shoah Foundation. “This new virtual field trip created with Discovery Education underscores the power of testimony to connect students to ordinary people that have changed their communities in order to develop understanding and respect.”

An accompanying educator guide provides teachers with materials and activities for before, during, and after the virtual field trip. Learn more and register here.

“Students are already out there making the world a better place. In partnership with USC Shoah Foundation, we are showcasing the ways that actions, big and small, can transform communities. Students can now learn from peers and be inspired to pursue their passions,” said Amy Nakamoto, General Manager of Social Impact at Discovery Education.

Discover more about the power of testimony through Teaching with Testimony at TeachingwithTestimony.com or within Discovery Education’s K-12 learning platform. Connecting educators to a vast collection of high-quality, standards-aligned content, ready-to-use digital lessons, intuitive quiz and activity creation tools, and professional learning resources, Discovery Education provides educators with an enhanced learning platform that facilitates engaging, daily instruction.

For more information about Discovery Education’s award-winning digital resources—which can be purchased with federal stimulus funds—and professional learning services, visit www.discoveryeducation.com, and stay connected with Discovery Education on social media through Twitter and LinkedIn.

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About USC Shoah Foundation
USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education develops empathy, understanding and respect through testimony, using its Visual History Archive of more than 55,000 video testimonies and its award-winning IWitness education program. USC Shoah Foundation’s interactive programming, research and materials are accessed in museums and universities, cited by government leaders and NGOs, and taught in classrooms around the world. Now in its third decade, USC Shoah Foundation reaches millions of people on six continents from its home at the University of Southern California.

About Discovery Education
Discovery Education is the worldwide edtech leader whose state-of-the-art digital platform supports learning wherever it takes place. Through its award-winning multimedia content, instructional supports, and innovative classroom tools, Discovery Education helps educators deliver equitable learning experiences engaging all students and supporting higher academic achievement on a global scale. Discovery Education serves approximately 4.5 million educators and 45 million students worldwide, and its resources are accessed in over 100 countries and territories. Inspired by the global media company Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. Discovery Education partners with districts, states, and trusted organizations to empower teachers with leading edtech solutions that support the success of all learners. Explore the future of education at www.discoveryeducation.com.

Contacts 
Ron Demeter | USC Shoah Foundation | uscsfpress@usc.edu 
Grace Maliska | Discovery Education | gmaliska@discoveryed.com

Data centers enable everything we do online, from powering the internet to making digital communication and connection possible. Not surprisingly, they also account for the highest percentage of Meta’s energy use, water use and greenhouse gas emissions — as well as where we can have the largest impact on reducing all three.

But what does it really mean for a data center to be sustainable?

Simply put, a sustainable data center is one that minimizes its environmental impact while still providing reliable and secure data processing and storage services. It involves prioritizing energy efficiency, utilizing renewable energy, conserving water and reducing waste.

Here, we share Meta’s approach to data center sustainability.

Energy Efficiency

The world’s data centers already represent 1 percent of the world’s electricity use. That’s why prioritizing energy efficiency is at the forefront of Meta’s approach to designing and operating the most sustainable data centers in the world. Our data centers incorporate energy-efficient hardware designs as well as cooling systems that use outdoor air and direct evaporative cooling to save both energy and water.

Helpful too are building sites uniquely designed to promote their location’s biodiversity, incorporating native plants and adaptive landscapes that mimic the natural hydrology and help reduce urban heat island effect. (Heat islands occur when structures such as buildings, roads, and other infrastructure absorb and re-emit the sun’s heat more than natural landscapes do.)

Renewable Energy

The use of renewable energy, such as solar or wind, also plays an important role in reducing the carbon footprint of a data center.

Our data center fleet is supported by 100 percent renewable energy spanning six countries and more than 20 U.S. states — and we’re on track to maintain this commitment as our operations grow. Our ability to achieve this commitment is due in large part due to our ambitious approach to renewable energy procurement, which has resulted in more than 70 new solar and wind projects adding more than 9,000 megawatts of clean electricity to the U.S. grid.

“Our renewable energy projects are diverse and driven by where we have an operational footprint,” Amanda Yang, Meta’s head of renewable energy for Americas West and the Asia-Pacific, recently shared with Triple Pundit. “One of our primary values is ensuring that we are adding new renewable capacity in the areas in which we operate.”

While 100 percent of our global operations are supported by renewable energy, “ultimately we are focused on continuing to evolve our approach to how we can help accelerate grid decarbonization [reducing emissions per unit of electricity generated],” Yang added. “Where we can, we are partnering with our utilities, developers, and regulators to make this happen.”

Conserving Water

Becoming water positive by 2030 is one of Meta’s largest and ambitious sustainability goals and it starts with working to reduce our water use.

We take measures such as using recycled water for construction purposes where possible, implementing best management practices to reduce construction water needs, and recycling water within our facility many times to reduce our water usage. Meanwhile, outside of our buildings, we use a combination of native plant species, efficient irrigation and alternative water sources, along with smart scheduling technologies. All told, we save nearly 130 million gallons of water per year.

Reducing Waste, Recycling Materials

Net zero and waste reduction go hand-in-hand. For a data center to be truly sustainable, a circular approach must be implemented, viewing waste as a valuable resource that can be reused, repurposed or recycled.

We are actively working to keep data center construction and demolition waste out of landfills and incineration facilities by recovering, reusing and recycling materials and continuing to pilot new approaches to reduce our waste even farther. In 2022, Meta recycled, reused or donated 158 thousand tons, diverting 91 percent of potential waste from local landfills.

For permanently installed wood in both our offices and data centers, we source products certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC), which confirms environmental protections for responsible forest management, protects customary rights of indigenous people and prohibits the use of highly hazardous chemicals.

We also prioritize the use of recycled materials in new data center hardware system designs, in addition to our continued focus on ensuring hardware is easy to disassemble and reuse. To continue to improve resource efficiency, we are also exploring ways to extend the life of racks and components used in our data centers and work closely with our downstream partners to find a second life for parts outside of our data centers through secondary markets. Our goal is to ensure all residual materials are responsibly managed.

Green Certifications

When it all comes together and a data center building is certified LEED Gold by the U.S. Green Building Council, we know we’re following best practices for environmental and sustainability criteria related to design and construction.

Today, 33 Meta data center buildings are now certified LEED Gold — as well as LEED Platinum in Luleå, Sweden — representing more than 19 million square feet in all.