Energy week: A green website

This week's eco-topic: Energy.

Got your own blog or website? To cap off energy week, here are some Internet-specific ways to reduce your footprint:

1. Switch to a green host. My personal blog's hosted by AISO.net, which is solar-powered! I can actually watch my solar panels live, if I feel so inclined.

Before switching hosts, look for one that 1) has a solid reputation or a reliable recommendation -- just as with conventional hosts, some green hosts are better than others (I highly recommend AISO.net, but had horrible experiences with Sustainable Websites) -- and 2) is actually powered by renewable energy. Some hosts simply buy offsets and call themselves green -- and switching to one of those isn't significantly different from just staying with your current host and buying your own offsets.

Buying offsets has become an increasingly controversial and murky issue; here's a primer on the good, bad, and confusing nature of offsets.

2. Get CO2Stats. This small, free widget measures -- and offsets -- the carbon emissions created by the total electricity usage of your readers' computers while they're on your site.

Two PhD students developed this app, and they're paying out-of-pocket to offset the carbon emissions of CO2Stats widget users through Sustainable Travel International. Again, the controversies surrounding offsets apply, but at the very least, CO2Stats highlights the fact that Internet surfing does come at a cost to the environment.

All you have to do is grab the free code and put it on your sidebar. My one complaint is that the widget isn't very self-explanatory; looking at it, it's difficult to tell what exactly makes the user's site "green" or what is being offset. But the guys say they're looking at adding "a small MouseOver popup of explanatory text that elaborates on our calculation methods to the widget."

Happy blogging --

Images courtesy of AISO.net and CO2Stats

Comments

[Erik Henson]

When I launched my eco-friendly website ( www.thegreenoption.com ) earlier this month I did so with AISO hosting that uses solar panels to energize there hosting services. I have no complaints and am happy with the service. The green hosting site also lets me use my google tools that other hosting programs don't offer yet. Going green with AISO offsets my hosting and lets me walk the walk in being eco-friendly and not being a contributor to global warming. Thanks.

[Abhijit Banerjee]

How do we lead our lives that are sustainable? How do we reduce our impact on the environment?
Here’s an open collaboration platform for people seeking choices for living a responsible life.

http://copperwiki.org/index.php/Main_Page

Anyone can come in and write, edit and be heard by those seeking to live consciously on this planet.
Community driven open collaboration

CopperWiki is a community driven open collaboration. It offers choices for living a healthy, useful and responsible life. Most of us are aware of the importance of conscious living and the urgency of making this concept a way of life.

The CopperWiki world informs, encourages, and shares the best practices for living responsibly as individuals, community, society, nation and as a planet. It aims at creating awareness about existing practices and products, their benefits and harmful impact and the choices available.

Fast conductor for information

The articles in Copperwiki aim at creating awareness about existing products and practices; the impact of using/following these products/practices; the choices available; the information related to these choices – all aimed at helping the reader make an informed choice. Hence it is a fast conductor for information—which otherwise exists piecemeal at various places.

The site has a wide and varied audience, who in addition to getting to know about the harmful impact of many products, want to know how to source organically produced products – especially in India.

Editable organization

The great part is that it is an ‘editable’ organization which subscribes to the wiki philosophy of an ‘anyone can edit’ where good people, with good intent and good work prevail over the not-so-good, the not-yet-great-enough, and sometimes the downright bad ones.

[Anna]

Siel,

I am glad you endorsed AISO. Besides being green, the service is great. I am constantly getting myself in trouble and they are always available to help. They have an online chat that I have used at night which is very useful. I have been with AISO for almost a year (where has the time gone...) and highly reccommend them. I think it is important if you blog about environmental issues you should walk the talk and use a green hosting service.

Anna http://www.green-talk.com

[Eric]

Great article!

Wow, I had no idea that green hosts existed... I will definately check them out and possibly make the "switch" for the green site that I am currently working on; thedailyprofile.net

[Mike Corrales]

I wanted to let readers know that my company, Greenest Host, combines both 1 and 2. We have a 100% solar powered web hosting company and we provide our customers with a widget that calculates, in real-time, how much carbon emissions savings are a result of their choice to go green. It's nice to know all the options out there.

[Brian]

The company I work for decided to go with a green host. We first went with greenest. We had a lot of problems. We do ecommerce and needed SSL. Right off the bat it didn't work. They are still telling me they are "working on it" and it has been two weeks (one week since we launched) and we still can't use our store. We then got an account with AISO (which actually owns the equipment that greenest is using but have been around a lot longer). They too had a number of problems, including a problem with their FTP server that constantly killed the uploads. While they worked on that problem we signed on with thinkhost. Our site relies heavily on MySQL, which still doesn't work at thinkhost. They too are "working on it". On all of these hosts, I never hear anything from them until after 10 am (we are EST) and even then usually not until after noon. Greenest NEVER returned any of my phone calls (thinkhost just doesn't have any phones). We are still waiting.

I have been working in this industry (including software dev, web design and system admin) for about ten years. I have NEVER seen this many problems in setting up a web site. I have used bluehost for years without any problems, but they aren't green.

I am not saying these are bad hosts, it may just be a full moon or something. But our run of bad luck has been astounding to say the least. As professionals who want to promote green we need to be careful not to allow "green" to become a substitute for skill and quality of service. If that happens then we might as well really go green and stop using the internet all together.