You might have seen our recent exciting announcement: Nimbus is officially carbon neutral. While we’ve always been passionate about being eco-conscious, this newest achievement follows our renewed proposition and increased focus on our green credentials.
When Nimbus was first established back in 2011, we made sure to operate from an eco-friendly data centre. Even back then, it was clear that the carbon emissions generated by the internet and its surrounding infrastructure were unsustainable – and we haven’t stopped working since then to reduce our carbon emissions even further.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to reach true carbon neutrality while the internet itself still releases CO2 with actions as small as every webpage visit – but we can offset what we can’t eliminate.
What does offsetting mean?
By the simplest definition, offsetting refers to the action of supporting the removal of CO2 emissions to the same degree as the ones you generate. It’s a balancing action, whereby a net carbon balance (in versus out) would result in a 0.
Often, businesses choose to offset their carbon emissions through tree-planting initiatives, as the planted trees work to remove the same amount of carbon the business generates.
However, multiple recent studies have suggested that the carbon savings of these programs are perhaps not as good as they might at first seem – especially with increased instances of wildfires threatening the offsetting initiatives.
There’s no denying that more trees are vital to the reduction of carbon emissions – but there are more ways to contribute to carbon savings that go further, and do more. That’s why Nimbus partnered with ClimatePartner to select three initiatives with significant social benefit as well.
Our green pledge
With enough money, anyone can become carbon neutral.
By supporting offsetting initiatives, like the ones mentioned above, businesses can ultimately wipe-out their carbon emissions without having to make any effort to change themselves.
But that’s not good enough for us.
At Nimbus, we’re passionate about making real, lasting changes. That’s why we’re pledging more than just offsetting – we’re making efforts to really tackle our carbon emissions throughout our business structure, from our data centre right down to the power behind our HQ air-con system.
Here are the other elements to our green pledge:
Eco-friendly hosting your clients will love.
Our clients have seen their sites’ carbon footprints drop by up to 92% after switching to us.The 3 initiatives we’re supporting
When choosing our offsetting initiatives, we made sure to select programs which would benefit not only the planet, but also the lives of people around the world.
We’re proud to share that Nimbus is supporting the following programs:
Reducing plastic in our global oceans
Firstly, we’re backing an ocean-cleaning project that seeks to remove plastic waste from the world’s seas.
The ocean stores a quarter of the CO2 from the atmosphere, and warming, overfishing, pollutants and waste endanger its balancing function. Through our partnership, each compensated tonne of CO2 equates to 10kg of plastic waste retrieved from the oceans.
Even better than that, Plastic Bank works with local communities to trade collected plastic for other benefits: like first aid kits, children’s education, food, or health insurance. Which means that the benefits stretch beyond the purely ecological.
Providing clean drinking water in Uganda
This project seeks to bring clean drinking water to communities in Uganda – reducing the need to collect and burn firewood to boil dirty water, which protects woodlands, and keeps harmful smoke and CO2 from being released in the process.
Not only that, but the clean drinking water has obvious benefits for local communities – who also benefit from not having to walk long distances (often on unsafe routes) to collect water and wood. This means more women and children will be able to access education, as they will gain back the time otherwise spent on sourcing drinking water.
Funding energy-efficient cooking bags in Cameroon
In Cameroon, meals are often cooked on open fires, which release huge amounts of carbon and cause negative health repercussions from breathing in smoke and ash.
Energy-efficient cooking bags mean that food can be slow-cooked over a period of hours, so it only needs to be heated once. This, in turn, frees up time, reduces expenses (less wood is required), and saves carbon.
Through this scheme, cleaner, safer cooking is being delivered to 6,000 households.
What carbon neutral web hosting means for you
Aside from the obvious benefit to the planet, and safeguarding the future of the internet, carbon neutral web hosting can also provide a material benefit to your business.
That’s because more and more clients are looking for ways to ‘green’ their supply chain and reduce their own emissions, and moving to Nimbus can immediately drop a website’s CO2 emissions by as much as 92%.
Plus, as a registered green web host with the Green Web Foundation, you can rest assured that your hosting is recognisably green – which gives everyone involved something to shout about.
So, if you’re interested in web hosting that supports the environment, as well as funds important humanitarian work abroad, come and talk to us. We’d love to have you.
