This is actually a guest blog written by Erika Rodriguez of Nadi Marketing!
Disclosure: Some of the links in this post may be “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, at no extra cost to you I will receive an affiliate commission.
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There is more and more attention being put on a corporation’s “carbon foot print” and clear ways to reduce green house gas emissions in the workplace. But what about your digital home footprint? What changes can you make in our home office? This blog focuses on greening your website as an easy and impactful place to start.
One Of The World’s Largest Polluters
The truth is the web isn’t as green as we all think as web hosting accounts for 2% of the world’s carbon emissions, the same amount as the airline industry.
The internet is one of the world’s largest polluters. It’s hard to believe that the internet is polluting our planet as we’ve seen numerous times to “save paper and go digital.” Also, companies have pivoted their operations and service to be online. For example, CDs and DVDs that were once producing tons of plastic are now streaming services like Spotify and Hulu.
All of these companies and our websites are “hosted,” aka stored on powerful servers. These servers are in-housed and maintained in massive data centers around the world. Data centers have increased at a rapid rate.
“In 2012, there were 500,000 data centers worldwide. Today there are over 8 million data centers worldwide.”
These data centers need to be cooled with air conditioning 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to prevent them from overheating and crashing. Data centers take an enormous amount of energy and, as a result, impact the environment.
What can we do about this? Let’s talk about eco web hosting!
Green Web Hosting
We can choose to host our website on an eco-friendly web hosting provider like GreenGeeks. These green web hosting companies strive to be energy-efficient with their data centers without compromising performance. Every green web hosting provider seeks to reduce its carbon footprint. I recommend using GreenGeeks; they are the world’s #1 green energy web hosting provider, and here’s why:
- GreenGeeks is a Green Power Partner of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) since 2009 with a 93% green power of total electricity use.
- On the website, GreenGeeks provides transparency by sharing its 5 data center locations: Phoenix, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, and Amsterdam. They also let you choose which data center your website is hosted by selecting where your hosting account is provisioned.
- GreenGeeks calculates how much energy they consume each year. For every amperage they pull from the grid, Green Geeks matches three times that in renewable energy via Bonneville Environmental Foundation. Your website is not only carbon-neutral, but it is carbon-reducing!
GreenGeeks is currently having a New Years Sale until the end of the month (the sale was just extended!). If you are thinking about creating a new website, looking for a new web hosting provider, or looking to go green with your website, I encourage you to check out GreenGeeks and take advantage of their sale. Plans are up to 75% off.
I know websites can be overwhelming; let me know if you have any questions in the comments below. Also, let me know if you’ve heard of green or eco web hosting before? I’m curious to know how many people are familiar with this terminology. It’s been eye-opening to learn about, and happy to share it with all of you.
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Erika Rodriguez is the founder of Nadi Marketing, an eco-conscious digital marketing agency remotely-based in San Diego, California. Erika helps mission-driven companies, social impact organizations, and ecopreneurs to create impactful content, partnerships, and campaigns that engage with the sustainable consumers of today. Follow/like me on Instagram, Facebook, Facebook Group: EcoBizCollective, LinkedIn, Twitter, or Pintrest
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Thank you, Erika for this informative and inspiring guest blog!
Live Creative is a sustainable business, marketing, and shopping hub. Our Creative Studio offers authentic marketing, branding, and sustainable business expertise to ethical, sustainable, and purpose brands. And Sustainable Business Team offers sustainability strategy and goals setting as well as sustainable packaging services. And, our Lifestyle Team curates our global Sustainable Marketplace, the Durango Sustainable Biz Guide, and Get Real—our inspiring Innovation for Good weekly newsletter.