With a title like that, I had better explain myself thoroughly!

Let it sink in a moment, calm your nerves & continue onwards. Fused Network will in fact, never been a ‘green’ hosting provider. Recently, a great deal of providers have began touting their horns about being ‘green’, ‘carbon neutral’, ‘solar powered’, ‘hippy eating bagel eaters’ & a number of other silly statements. To each their own, of course.

Fused Network, on the other hand, we’re going to set ourselves apart. We’re not going to be green for the sake of selling accounts & cheap underhanded marketing, instead of being ‘green’ or lining the pockets of the ‘carbon credit’ companies — we’re going to be environmentally conscious. Not just because we can be, but rather because every single living organism on this planet should be conscious of the environment because it matters.

For years I’ve been minimizing my contributions to the downfall of man (at least when I’m not planning worldwide domination & ruling with an ironfist). I rollerblade instead of driving, take public transportation & buses whenever long hauls are necessary — even going as far to avoid purchasing white sugar, white breads & Styrofoam. It’s not too hard to make decisions as a consumer that ‘help’ reduce our emissions & cause less environmental impact.

The problem we run into though, isn’t the fact that we’re consumers (a given, necessary evil to survive) but rather what we consume. As consumers we have a choice. We decide the fate of the planet.

A large web hosting provider recently went ‘green’ by purchasing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of carbon credits. A good chunk of these credits went directly to the pockets of the administration in these companies. An even larger percentage went to advertising & “education”. A tiny sliver of the funds went into planting trees & actually offsetting carbon production. One organization that sells carbon credits even goes as far as saying 0% of the funds actually offset carbon, rather 100% of the funds go into marketing to ‘educate’ users about carbon offsetting. I read that as a scam.

In the meantime, the company who purchased the carbon offsets has a selling point. They’ve also cleared their conscious & believe themselves to be ‘better’, cleaner & can go on living the way they did previously. They’ve took the easy way out — but couldn’t they have done something more?

In total they have over 500,000 clients. If they were to tell their clients to turn off their PCs at night, they would have offset their ‘carbon footprint’ by 100,000x — a few servers, generators & cooling equipment is nothing compared to what their own clients are contributing to the environment.

If they were to tell their clients to avoid driving when possible, enjoy ‘less frustrating’ public transportation, bike & rollerblade, maybe even get off their fat asses and walk — they would have offset it even more! The fact of the matter though is the company would rather use this ‘green’ term as an advertising method. It’s a movement, of course so there’s always going to be people to buy into it.

Instead, in my opinion they ‘copped out’. Education, of course is rarely the method of choice — they just bought their way out of the problem. Fused Network, will never be green.

Instead we’ll, we’ll try to convince our own friends & clients to:

  • Find alternate methods of getting to work — rollerblade, bike, walk, take public transportation
  • Avoid certain types of ‘white’ products. White sugar is bleached — bad for the environment!
  • Turn off your computers at night! Our 5-10 odd servers are easily offset by the hundreds of clients we have who leave their computers on all night.
  • Buy ‘used’ stuff when possible to avoid waste
  • Buy locally grown & produced products
  • Minimize the amount of stuff purchased in Styrofoam, cardboard & other unnecessary evils. Bring your own bag or box when shopping.

As a company, we’re doing as much as possible too. We’re doing our best to only utilize AMD systems that have a reduced energy usage compared to competing leading Intel products. We avoid air conditioning in the office, have all but banned Styrofoam & cars are non-existent :) Luckily for us, we’re in Toronto so the public transportation system is perfect to get around to meetings with clients!

There’s many, many things we can all do to contribute & offset our own carbon footprints.

In my opinion, carbon credits & offsets aren’t one of them.

Each of us has the power to impact the environment: How we go about our day decides whether we’ll benefit it or destroy it.

We’re fans of saving it though, after all it’s our home. You can signup to Fused Network today with the coupon code ‘wwf’ & 100% of your first payment will be donated to World Wildlife, we prefer putting our money where our mouth is.