
Yes it’s a thing. An ever increasingly important one. Green hosting is here, and it’s here to stay.
Websites are hosted on servers – basically large, powerful computers – in a data centre usually alongside hundreds of other servers and thousands of other websites. Each server consumes electricity 24/7 and pumps out heat as a consequence. Imagine that data centre’s electrical consumption, the accumulative heat output, the air con systems required to cool everything down to keep things running smoothly. Websites do therefore have their own carbon footprint, and high demand for AI content generation isn’t helping.
Slowly companies are beginning to realise and understand the impact of this. In the words of Greenpeace, “the IT sector already consumes an estimated 7% of global electricity.” Technological progress is great but its cumulative effects on our planet are pretty scary.
What is green hosting?
There’s a limit to how much hosting companies can do – we’re pretty sure servers made out of bamboo or recycled cardboard wouldn’t work too well – but there are some responsible actions to be taken.
For example, carbon offsetting – planting trees, using renewable energy, purchasing green certificates to offset the use and cost of conventional energy, promoting energy-saving initiatives and so on.
There’s even an SEO benefit to green hosting, which we expect Google to respect more and more in the coming years. A lighter-weight website is faster and requires less resources to load – better for SEO and kinder on your host’s energy usage to serve up the website.
Our web hosting is eco-friendly
If you host your website with us, as well as the usual secure, speedy and robust web hosting service you’d expect, you’ll get green hosting. What this means in practice:
- It’s part of The Trillion Tree Community which aims to plant or protect 1 billion trees by 2030.
- Maroon Balloon has its own carbon-cancelling forest. We host a lot of websites and have so far had 75 trees planted on our behalf.
- Our hosting company works hard to not only achieve carbon neutrality of our electrical energy usage, but to make sustainability a central part of its operational approach. It works in partnership with 1t.org, Veritree, Ecologi, Trees for Life, The Million Tree Pledge and SME Climate Hub.
- All our websites are powered by 100% renewable energy.
Why would you not use green hosting? We’re happy to chat through your hosting requirements to see how smoothly you can make the switch to eco-friendly hosting for yourselves and start helping the planet. Help us plant more trees today!