Just when I was about to delete yet another random email from my inbox, my curiosity got the better of me. The subject line read “Make your blog carbon neutral - 1 Blog, 1 Tree”. The email was from a German based company called kaufDA. kaufDA is a leading German site for local search and local promotion search. The company enables users to look for the best local sales online, search brochures of local retailers and find stores near them. They claim that this reduces the printed sales brochures that normally flood the letter box or are distributed in other ways. Now, I am not sure how they are taking care of their carbon footprints. Since their site has an Alexa rating of 13,371 they sure must be generating a lot of footprints. Hope they themselves are planting trees!
They do have an impressive website to explain the whole business of blogs and carbon foot prints.
Anyway I wrote to them to find out if they really intend to plant trees or if it was just another sales gimmick to garner more traffic to their site. I did receive a quick and convincing response. KaufDe has teamed up with Arbor Day Foundation, a nonprofit conservation and education organization based in US. The trees will be planted in Plumas National Forest in Northern California. Arbor Day Foundation’s aim is to reforest Plumas National Forest which was destroyed by recent forest fires. If one is a US citizen and joins Arbor Day Foundation, they give you 10 trees for free! Their website claims that last year members planted 8 million trees.
According to a study by Alexander Wissner-Gross, PhD, physicist at Harvard University and environmental activist, an average website causes about 0.02g (0,0008oz.) of carbon dioxide for each visit. Assuming an average blog gets 15,000 visits a month, it has yearly carbon dioxide emissions of 3,6kg (8lb.). This can mainly be tracked back to the immense energy usage from (mainframe) computers, servers, and their cooling systems
While I am sure I don't create much traffic to my blog to add significant amount to the carbon footprint, I would love to have a tree planted in lieu of my blog!
As they say, reduction of carbon emissions by planting trees has the same effect, regardless of where in the world the trees are planted. It involves all of us to give something back to our environment.
And those of you who do generate a lot of carbon can either plant a tree or join this cause for a carbon free blogging!
