When choosing provider of online services, you are also making an active decision about your impact on the environment.
Today, it is a (mostly) accepted fact that humankind needs to make substantial adjustments to improve the health of our planet. As many of us struggle to understand how we can maximize the impact we have on this transition (while minimizing our efforts), the consequence of our online habits is one of the less known levers to the general public.
Any online service today is heavily dependent on servers located in data centers around the globe to deliver any kind of contents to the end-users. An email service as such, is no exception.
Data centers pollute but do not care
In fact, data center web servers account for as much as 2% of the total greenhouse gas emissions; which is about the same amount as air travel globally. Furthermore, as consumers seems to spend more and more time online, the data center industry is steadily expanding its footprint.
To make it even worse; a recent study by SuperMicro showed that 43% of respondent data center companies have no existing environmental policy, and hence this is not a top priority.
According to this study from DigiPlex and IDG Connect, 60% of business decision makers surveyed were not sure in which countries their data resided – a staggering figure considering the potential impact this has on the company’s carbon footprint (not to mention privacy concerns for their customers).
Make a statement
In the light of these facts, it is clear that businesses should pay much more attention to the impact of their online services on the health of our planet.
We also believe that consumers with a certain environmental awareness should start caring about the carbon footprint of the online services they rely on. The main services to keep an eye on are those with higher spend of bandwidth, since these (usually) require more energy to deliver their services. Hence, starting with providers of video, music and gaming services should be a natural priority.
We also recommend selecting an email provider with a healthy attitude towards environmental impact. After all, this is a great opportunity for you to show the world that you care.
We hope and believe that having an @fjordmail.com email address has a greener and cleaner association than e.g. @coalmail.com. Of course, we really try to live up to such associations and expectations as well. We will write more about this in the time to come.
