I've written a lot before about the environmental costs of using the web, and it's a subject that is only going to get more important as our lives tend towards the digital. So I was interested to get wind of a Canadian organisation that wants people to help people mitigate the affects of their online activities.
The company, Greenscroll, says it's a non-profit that will take your pledges and specifically put the money into green energy projects. The idea is that by supporting them with a pledge, you can offset the environmental cost of running your website.
From their site:
On your behalf, Greenscroll invests into green renewable energy projects, thus increasing the supply of green energy and therefore decreasing demand for polluting non-renewable sources. In other words, we pump green energy into the grid to power your website. As a result, your web presence becomes environmentally friendly, while your footprint is virtually reduced to zero — and visitors will recognize that fact by the Greenscroll certificate on your site.
Will it work?
My first thoughts were dominated by the fact that I am not a fan of offsetting schemes, which I think give people the wrong incentives to change their behaviour - even if a scheme like this was compulsory, it would only encourage increased usage from those who could afford the offsetting costs.
In these cases, my mind is always cast to an Israeli daycare experiment that introduced fines to discourage parents from picking up their children late; in fact, the extra financial element actually increased lateness because the parents were now clear about the consequences of their - rather than pressure being applied socially, they now understood what they could and couldn't afford.
Awareness of this issue is important - especially since a great deal of the environmental cost of running a website is probably hidden away from you, the creator. But is it something you'll be signing up for?
