Conscious Hosting – What Is It?

In our Conscious Commerce whitepaper, we analysed the sustainability efforts of 100 merchants across a range of verticals. Retailers are rightly expected to step up and help in the fight against climate change. After all, many of these businesses will be contributing to the climate crisis, in one way or another.

While our whitepaper mainly focused on physical goods such as packaging, there is another area merchants can work on to improve their sustainability efforts.

Taking Sustainability Digital With Conscious Hosting

We should all be aware of the term ‘carbon footprint’, so let’s take a look at what that means for eCommerce businesses.

Did you know that the average website produces 1.76 grams of CO2 per page view? Think of how many web pages you view in a single day. That’s a lot of CO2. It’s also something online merchants should keep in mind.

Specifically, web hosting is very energy-intensive. If you’ve ever been to or seen a photo of inside a data centre, you will know that they are filled with tens of thousands of high-powered computers, running 24/7 and producing a substantial amount of heat. The heat also means they tend to have a cooling system to control the temperature.

However, there are some hosting providers that are trying to tackle this issue by investing in a carbon offsetting scheme. This is where they pay to generate the same amount of energy used via renewable sources. While this doesn’t eradicate the problem of producing CO2 in the first place, it does help to put more renewable energy into the grid.

Let’s face it, we need to be doing something.

Carbon-Free Google

Google has stepped up their sustainability efforts, recently. They state that their goal is to ‘run on carbon-free energy, 24/7, at all of our data centers by 2030’ which is fairly impressive. They also recently launched Carbon Footprint reporting for Google Cloud. This allows users and businesses to measure, track and report on their carbon emissions associated with the Cloud. If businesses are just made a little more aware of what they are putting out into the environment, it will mean we can all start living more sustainably.

What can you do to help?

Well, you could make sure you use an eco-friendly hosting provider for starters. It’s also important for businesses to understand their carbon footprint, where it’s coming from and changes they can make to their business to reduce the impact they have on the environment.

Check out our Conscious Commerce: Uncovering Sustainability In Retail whitepaper for more insights.