Is sustainability close to your heart as a website owner? Then consider sustainable hosting. After all, with a green host, you reduce your CO2 emissions. Some hosting companies go a step further by supporting green projects. For example, the company that hosts this website protects the rainforest in Colombia!
Why choose sustainable hosting?
“If the Internet was a country, it would be the fourth largest polluter.“That’s because everything online is hosted on servers in data centers. For example, your website and your photos, which are in your cloud, are on a server somewhere. And this central computer also needs electricity.
This is precisely where the problem lies: at the time of writing, most servers worldwide are still powered by bog energy, which generates enormous CO2 emissions. A sustainable host is aware of this and opts for renewable energy. Power that is generated by wind, water or solar power.
How does sustainable hosting work?
Simply put: the web hosting company buys green electricity and uses it to power the servers. By choosing a green host, you are already significantly reducing your website’s CO2 emissions.
A small disclaimer: moving to a green hosting company is a step in the right direction, but does not immediately lead to a sustainable website. In fact, other steps are needed to make your website more sustainable.
Want to know how to make your website more sustainable? Get started right away with tips to make your website more sustainable.
Do I have sustainable hosting?
You can easily find this out for yourself by using the Green Web Foundation’s green hosting checker. You scan your website and immediately find out if you have a green host. Do you have sustainable hosting? Then you can get a sustainable hosting badge through this foundation. This is what this badge looks like:
Don’t get a clear answer right away? Then you can also use the Green Web Directory consult. In this database you can find out if your host is included in the list of sustainable web hosting companies.
Which sustainable host should I choose?
Want to learn more about corporate social responsibility? Then discover here how you can do business with impact.
Reforestation and protection of tropical rainforest
One example is reforestation projects. Thus, in collaboration with GoForest, Combell plants new trees in Marche-en-Famenne, Belgium..
Another partner project of Combell, which I support tremendously, is the protection of the rainforest in my favorite country Colombia. Located on the border with Venezuela, the Matavén Nature Reserve is governed by a local indigenous culture. For years, this area struggled with deforestation. In order to combat this, Combell invests here, in partnership with Ecologi, in facilities for the local population. Think of education, health and local economy. A win-win situation: one invests in people and the felling of trees is stopped.
Conclusion
Data centers have huge CO2 emissions. By choosing sustainable hosting as a website owner, you can already reduce your emissions quite a bit. There are a huge number of companies that offer sustainable hosting, but some go the extra mile and invest in other green projects.