By Anders Lorenzen
Like most websites, we run a news site that is exclusively managed online. To ensure we can deliver content, we require several third-party platforms.
The most critical of those services is the service that hosts our domain and website, the services we use for creating and publishing content optimised for the latest evolution in web publishing.
Improving our sustainability performance
As a website that focuses on the climate, energy, and biodiversity crises, we have long thought we must do more to run as green an operation as possible.
Hosting our site is one of the website’s most carbon-intensive activities, and this was the first thing we should tackle to become greener.
While a core proportion of our readers are based in the US, we also want to decentralise the services we use so that we do not rely 100% on US companies.
Partially a response to the Trump Administration
Especially in the wake of the Trump Administration and his attack on democracy, freedom of speech, action on climate and the free press.
As the most important part of our organisation, our identity, and our name, we felt we could not, in good faith, continue to register with a company headquartered in a country where the government goes against everything we stand for.
It’s the end of an era
We will not name the company, as it has done nothing wrong; it has made great strides in greening its operations in recent years.
But we have decided it was time to say goodbye to the company that has hosted our domain since our beginning in 2012.
Going Swiss
Several companies offer sustainable domain hosting, but we wanted to find one that was right for us.
After intensive research, we have chosen a company we are delighted to have landed with.
We wanted a company that, while based in Europe, had enough servers around the world so we could continue to serve our global audience at the highest level while putting sustainability at its core.
We found someone who could do just that in Infomaniak, a technology solutions company based in Switzerland.
Full transparency
We like the fact that they do not sugarcoat things. As a company, they admit they’re a CO2 emitter and show transparency by stating their emissions, which they promise to offset by 200%.
In addition to already having its data centres powered by 100% clean energy sources, the company wants to make further advances in energy management, such as improving energy efficiency.
Connecting its electricity generators to the Swiss grid ensures that others can use any excess green energy they produce.
The journey does not end here
Our domain hosting only accounts for a part of our emissions. We will continue to work on greening other elements of our site’s operations, such as optimising so it responds faster. You need to consume less electricity when you click on one of our links.
Infomaniak offers other services besides hosting, and we are exploring and trialing the possibility of moving our email operations to them.
Watch this space for further announcements.
Anders Lorenzen is the founding Editor of A greener life, a greener world.
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