When hosting your website with us, included in your hosting plan, will CO2 offset each website page load by website visitors, including data centers in-between, the transmission networks, plus the end user devices that are viewing your site. This is considered our Scope 3 emissions. We do this by monitoring the service logs that keep track of bandwidth used for each client. For website views, the logs include the IP address, what browser being using and the computer OS. Plus for DNS and Email hosted with us, we track and include DNS queries for your website and Email usage for CO2 offsetting, making your online website footprint 100% CO2-neutral. Using this passive tracking information and the Sustainable Web Designs' formula, we calculate and keep track of the CO2 usage of your hosting account, and then offset it for you using verified carbon offset projects from our partner Ecologi. These offsets have been certified by Gold Standard to verifiably avoided CO2e, and which are also inline with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. You can see the usage and offset information in our control panel under the Climate Impact section when managing your service. Click here to view our offset Certificate.

The vast difference in what a company shows for their CO2 emissions numbers comes down to what companies generally choose to include in these kinds of industry reports. Carbon footprints are often broken down into three “scopes,” with Scope 1 encompassing direct company emissions (i.e. factory emissions, brick-and-mortar offices, and its own vehicles for travel and commuting). Meanwhile, Scope 2 includes emissions stemming from heating, A/C, and electricity usage in company buildings like offices and data centers. Most hosting companies also use cPanel which has its own environmental footprint for the company and its employees, banks, etc. We built our own control panel so we don't have to use cPanel, thus lowering our Scope 3 emissions. Scope 3 focuses on all the extra, indirect emissions from supply chain manufacturing alongside products’ lifecycle emissions. Most often, businesses choose to detail only Scopes 1 and 2, as they are usually smaller than Scope 3’s numbers, even when combined. This often makes a company’s carbon footprint appear much smaller than it actually is when seen as a fuller picture; a strategy often referred to as “greenwashing.” We cover all three to make sure we correctly account for all parts of our hosting and to the best of our ability in helping people, wildlife and the planet.

We are currently funding carbon avoiding projects and plan to also fund the more expensive carbon removal projects (projects that actually remove current carbon in the air) in the future as well. While the biggest impact we can make is to reduce our own emissions, carbon avoidance projects all provide complementary climate solutions to prevent greenhouse gas emissions, restore nature, and support local communities. Supporting these projects allows us to compensate for our remaining, unavoidable emissions. These projects are certified by either the Gold Standard or Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard (VCS). Additional certifications for VCS certified projects indicate their contribution to sustainable development and the co-benefits they offer to local people and nature, such as the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standard (CCBS) and the Sustainable Development Verified Impact Standard (SD VISta). Our provider also uses third-party platforms, including carbon intelligence platform Sylvera, to ensure the projects we support are of the highest standard.