Carbon offsetting is a popular buzzword we hear a lot about these days. The question is, does it work? Coupled with the right motives, the concept has a lot of promise. It allows green-minded individuals to offset things they have no control over – allowing them to play a bigger part in making our planet a little greener. On the other hand, instead of changing bad habits, it enables people to mitigate the effects of living an unsustainable lifestyle, giving them no reason to change.
One thing we don’t have much control over is the huge amount of electricity it takes to run billions of websites on the Internet. Each day, the Internet’s carbon footprint is growing drastically as most of the energy used comes from dirty sources like oil and coal. Carbon offsetting is one solution we can employ to increase the supply of green energy and decrease the demand for non-renewable sources.
Greenscroll, a Canadian non-profit organization, has come up with a solution to do just that. When you pledge the appropriate amount of money, Greenscroll will offset the carbon footprint of your website on your behalf by investing that money into renewable energy projects. In effect, they add green renewable energy to the grid to power your website. Thus, your website’s footprint is effectively reduced to zero – and you’ll be able to advertise that fact by featuring a Greenscroll certificate on your site.
The process itself is relatively easy. Either by using Greenscroll’s suggestion tool located on their website or by calculating your own website’s page views, you can determine the appropriate monetary amount to pledge. Four pledge tiers are available, ranging from donations of $5 per month to $100 per month.
Greenscroll itself seems to be completely transparent – even inviting suggestions on how to best use the pledge money. They also believe in community. They are concerned about which new energy projects should be funded, what people they should be connected with, and how they can achieve the greatest impact.
Besides using a green hosting company to host your site, carbon offsetting your website is a workable solution that can achieve good results. It shouldn’t be viewed as a panacea, but if green-minded individuals use it as an additional way of living green, it can help reduce the carbon footprint of the virtual world while making a difference in the real one.
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In the context of today’s world, ‘consuming’ and ‘balance’ in the same sentence seems to be an oxymoron.
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Thanks for the coverage. And as you mention, drop by with suggestions — we’re all in this together!
Cheers,
John
Greenscroll