If you are reading this, chances are that you’re interested in why we’ve chosen to host our websites in a sustainable way, and perhaps get an idea if this is something your business should consider. The answer is simple: YES, you totally should!
Why is going green a necessity?
With the current climate crisis, as an agency, it’s always encouraging when we are seeing more and more of our clients take ownership and responsibility for their environmental impact. Whether it is through making greener purchasing choices or finding ways to measure and offset their carbon emissions – sustainability is definitely taking a predominant place in everyone’s business agenda. Small to large, travel to office supplies, businesses are finding new ways to be greener – and in this blog post, we are going to introduce you to another great sustainable option: green web hosting.
What is green hosting?
First things first. I often describe what hosting means to clients like the land where your website is built on. Before building your website, you need to pay for a space and storage where your website and assets (content, images etc) will live (your web hosting). For all of our hosting, we use a company called Siteground (not sponsored), they describe green hosting like this:
Green web hosting means that the hosting provider is committed to contribute towards the health of the environment and proactively takes eco-friendly actions that involve either carbon offsetting or renewable energy usage in order to reduce or mitigate the environmental impact of their servers’ energy consumption.
Why do we need green hosting?
In a nutshell, websites live in hosting companies and those are stored in servers and data centres that process, and deliver all website information. They are typically housed in large facilities that require a controlled and artificially-cooled environment to function properly. However, this demands a significant amount of energy, leading to global data centres consuming approximately 1% of worldwide electricity use and emitting high levels of CO2, according to recent studies.
Because today’s internet and digital growth require more energy and resources to handle content storage and traffic, it’s crucial to select a hosting provider that prioritises data centre efficiency and environmental sustainability to combat climate change and gain benefits for your business.
If you want your website to be environmentally responsible, you need hosting that is sustainable too!
What's good about it?
- Using green web hosting reduces your digital carbon footprint as sustainable hosting companies usually favour renewable energy vs standard energy sources.
- Chances are opting for green hosting will make your website more efficient – as sustainable hosting companies tend to be quite hot on the optimisation of digital resources.
- It’s a small step with a big impact! By hosting your website on a green supplier you are already reducing your impact on the planet.
- It doesn’t cost the earth, literally. Using a green hosting company is not expensive at all and better for the planet.
In our case, we host our clients’ websites (and our own!) on green hosting platform Siteground who also reduce their carbon footprint by partnering with providers that are committed to carbon neutrality. You can read their 2023 sustainability report to get an idea of their green standards.
We hope that by showing you small ways to be more sustainable, you’ll be inspired to join us in making a difference towards a more sustainable digital way of doing business!
Would you like your website to be more sustainable or accessible?
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