Having recently dived into the reasons why we need carbon-neutral websites, analyzed steps to create a sustainable website, and understood how optimized buying journeys help in our efforts to create a greener web, it’s time to showcase your brand’s sustainability efforts with a carbon neutral certification.
What is a Carbon Neutral Certification?
A carbon neutral certification is an official label or documentation awarded to companies that have achieved true carbon-neutral status. This company has reached a state of carbon neutrality. Each business emits greenhouse gasses. As CO2 accounts for about 76 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, it is an organization’s responsibility to compensate for the emission of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. They have done this by investing in climate projects that directly remove, avoid, or capture carbon eg: reforestation, building renewable energy, carbon-storing agricultural practices, and waste-to-energy management.
Automatically Make Your Website Carbon Neutral
Pathmonk Climate automatically offsets your emissions through high-quality climate projects, while analyzing and calculating your website’s carbon footprint. Showcase your climate actions with your zero-emission website certificate.
It’s easy for us to understand how cars, factories, and businesses emit carbon, but how does your website? We often think of the web as this virtual space and forget to acknowledge its very physical impact. Websites are an accumulation of different content like text, images, animations, etc. The website content and the code used to create the website need to be stored somewhere, in the same way, we store documentation, music, and images on our personal computers.
These take up space and if this data isn’t stored on our personal computers it needs to be stored somewhere else; a server. A server is essentially a super-powerful computer that has one purpose; to serve data. These servers are housed in data centers that use standard grid electricity as their main source of power.
Your Website’s Carbon Footprint
Data centers globally account for 3% of the global electricity supply and consume more power than the entire UK. Data centers also contribute 2% of the total global greenhouse gas emissions. So it’s no surprise that websites emit CO2 and we collectively need to work towards achieving a website carbon neutral certification.
When we consider what it takes to complete a simple website visit; from the energy required on the end user’s device, the communication networks, the data centers where a website is hosted, and the storage of that data, we can see that the resources that are needed to accomplish this, quickly start to add up.
Considering the continuous use of energy that is needed for data transfer across all the elements coupled with the cooling system required to ensure those data centers function reliably you can see that data centers generate a lot of heat and energy. From the batteries to the generators to the fire protection system, running and maintaining data centers is starting to have an environmental impact.
When loading and transferring data from the data center through the network to the end user, coupled with the programming language used on that website, can mean up to 10 times more energy consumption. Therefore the more data our websites have the more energy is burned.
How to Get Your Website Carbon Neutral Certification
1. Analyze & Understand Your Website Emissions
Nothing gives you more power than knowledge and we must gather data in order to understand and change. Knowing how much CO2 your website emits and understanding that impact is the first step to getting your carbon neutral certification. So how can you truly understand the impact of your website? Well, Pathmonk Climate helps you do just that. It automatically analyses your website’s carbon footprint and you’ll receive a custom website emissions report.
The average website produces 6.8 grams of CO2 per page view. Therefore, a website with 10,000 page views per month would produce 816kg of CO2 per year. To put this into perspective, a Boeing 737 generates around 115g of CO2 per passenger per km and a car emits about 650g of CO2 per km. With this automatic analysis, you can truly understand your website’s impact and take action to offset these emissions.
2. Offset Your Emissions
Now that you understand the full impact your website has on the environment, it’s time to offset those carbon emissions. This is the most important step when it comes to achieving your carbon neutral certification. A carbon offset is a way to compensate for your emissions by funding an equivalent carbon dioxide saving elsewhere. This means that you are sure the same amount of carbon your website emits is the same amount that is being absorbed; balancing out the total amount of carbon emissions.
Pathmonk Climate helps you do this automatically. Through high-quality climate projects that compensate for the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, you can actively contribute to a better global climate.
3. Get Your Website Carbon Neutral Certification
Well done, you’ve come so far. Having analyzed your emissions, and offset your emissions, your reward is nigh. As Patmonk Climate automatically analyzes and offsets your emissions, it also gets you certified. You can share your climate actions with visitors, investors, and the world with your website carbon neutral certification.
Our Insider Tip
While you’ve taken a step in the right direction, we have tips to get you even further in your mission to reduce your carbon footprint. Offsetting your carbon emissions is essential as your website will continue to impact the environment. However, you can also reduce your carbon emissions, and therefore reduce how much carbon you need to offset. Which saves you money.
Websites are constantly evolving; requiring updates, reviews, tests, and optimizations. So taking a deeper look into what elements make up your website and ultimately optimizing and simplifying, can drastically reduce the weight of your website; resulting in fewer carbon emissions. We have content made just for you in your journey to carbon neutrality.
With our ultimate guide to a sustainable website and tips for optimizing your buying journeys, you can create a top-performing website, empower your prospects, improve website traffic, increase conversions and contribute to climate change. You’ll truly deserve that website carbon neutral certification!
By looking beyond your website to smaller strategies like your email campaigns or even green marketing strategies overall you can take steps that make a big impact in our global responsibility fight climate change.
Automatically Make Your Website Carbon Neutral
Pathmonk Climate automatically offsets your emissions through high-quality climate projects, while analyzing and calculating your website’s carbon footprint. Showcase your climate actions with your zero-emission website certificate.
