Sustainability

Often, we tend to view technology as having no negative impact on our planet. However, the reality is that if you own a website or any computing device, you are contributing to environmental harm through excessive emissions and e-waste.

The crucial point to grasp is that all technological devices require energy, which may come from burning fossil fuels, leading to pollution and CO2 emissions in our environment.

The rapid advancement of technology and the constant introduction of newer and more advanced devices have led to a significant increase in electronic waste generation. Unfortunately, much of this e-waste ends up in landfills or is improperly disposed of, posing serious environmental and health risks.

For greneIT, it is important that we not just focus on being CO2 neutral but go a step ahead in being sustainable. This way we are not only taking care of our environment for now but also investing in saving our environmental legacy for our future generations.

Sustainability focuses on meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

The Process

Our initial approach involves utilising refurbished servers whenever available, aiming to minimise the generation of e-waste.

The subsequent phase involves adopting a three-step approach to attain sustainability in hosting. Our three step process is based on the understanding that once we open a website it travels across three areas. First being the server, followed by travelling over data networks i.e. undersea cable, fibre optic, Wi-Fi and finally the third is the users’ device. There is energy consumption in all three stages which mean emissions!

1. We are working with some data centres in Netherlands, Finland and Germany to provide hosting which runs on 100% renewable energy and use natural cooling methods.
2. As we do not have any control on the data networks, a website hosted with us can be viewed anywhere in the world. To overcome this, we monitor the website usage and then offset it by investing in social impact projects. This is transparent as you will get a certificate to show what we have done and where we are doing it.
3. The third step is to check the device the website is viewed on and get an energy footprint to compensate that CO2.

All this data is added up to monthly to get a website usage CO2 footprint. We offset this by investing in social and environmental projects chosen by our clients. Apart, from this we also invest 5% of every invoiced amount into CO2 sequestration technologies via Stripe.

We also test websites hosted with us for how much CO2 will they be emitting if they were on an ordinary server and then plant trees to offset that CO2, even though we have clean servers. This way we are over compensating for the CO2. We replace technological emissions with positive environmental impact. A world which will look more like this…

The Impact

When you use our services we will offer you various options on how you would like us to offset the CO2 for you. This can be done by investing in Social or Environmental Impact Projects. Investing in Social Impact Projects you helps the local communities to a better life by offering them alternative cooking fuel, instead of wood. It can also be investment in water storage/harvesting solutions or helping them to learn to live in a sustainable way using natural resources. An ideal benefit would be to the women in India who walk miles to collect wood from the forest and carry it back to their home to use as firewood to cook meals. It can also be people in Africa who would walk long distances to get drinking water. Our Environmental Projects help with afforestation and saving endangered species habitats.

Our partners (Trees for All & Fair Climate Fund) work with Gold Standard certified projects and we will give you a certificate as we invest in these projects for you. Plus, you will also receive a ‘Certificate of Sustainability’ from greneIT and a sustainable badge for your website. If you are a premium member then we will also provide you with your very own ‘Sustainable Impact’ page which will show your investment towards making our planet a better place.

Sustainability Badge from greneIT