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How green was your webhost?

Everything produces a carbon footprint - even the most seemingly benign or passive things. Some industries are obvious polluters, but many of those businesses are trading in carbon markets and offsetting their filthy habits by planting trees. Some are even changing their ways.

I was intrigued by the claims of my webhost in the United States to be 'green' - in fact they are carbon neutral:

"DreamHost is carbon neutral. We've calculated the impact of everything that DreamHost uses and leaves behind in the course of our daily work. All of the resources that we use - paper in the office, electricity for our servers, even the gas in our cars that bring us to the office - leaves behind some kind of soul-sucking residue in the world.

When we learned that running DreamHost generated as much carbon dioxide as 545 average-size homes we realized we had to do something to neutralize our emissions.

With a bit of research we found the most effective approach begins with resource conservation: turning off the lights, reducing travel, printing on both sides of the page. Efforts are being ramped up here daily to do what we do with less. The next step is to use clean, renewable energy. Without the option to put up solar panels or connect with a green power utility for us this means purchasing Renewable Energy Credits. Finally, to neutralize those unavoidable emissions we’ve invested in Emission Reduction Credits (a.k.a. “offsets”) which guarantee our remaining impact is effectively erased. A third-party-certification? Never fear. The credits we use to green our energy consumption and neutralize the rest of our emissions meet the highest standards in the industry."


…all of which makes me feel good. But more importantly they are the best web host I have every had anything to do with over the past 12 years (there have been a few). Low cost - fantastic service and reliability and incredibly easy to use. If you are thinking of setting up a site (or sites) I recommend Dreamhost. Unlike most businesses I have anything to do with they also reward you for being a customer by adding to your storage at no extra charge the longer you stay with them. When did your bank ever do anything like that for you?

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