We’re all trying to find meaningful ways to reduce our carbon footprint, from switching to an ethical bank or finding an energy supplier using renewable energy. One way you can reduce your personal footprint is to switch to a green web hosting service for your company’s website.

The Women in Sustainability Network have recently changed our web hosting to Guru Cloud Hosting, meaning our website is now hosted green! This hosting company’s UK data centre uses 100% renewable energy, has a PuE (Power usage Effectiveness) rating of 1.2 and environmental management policy externally assessed to ISO 14001 standards.

WINS Founder Rhian Sherrington shares why it was important to the organisation to make the change, and how she found the process of switching;

“As a business, Women in Sustainability is completely signed up to be a ‘business for good’ and we’ve been working our way through the SDG Action Manager, the B-Corp Impact Assessment Tool with the intention of becoming B-Corp certified next year. Shifting our website and email server onto a 100% renewable energy was a quick win for reducing carbon emissions from our activities. Previously I had thought this would be a complicated or expensive option but thanks to Jacob, our clued-up web developer, I’ve seen how easy this can be. I would really recommend everyone to look seriously at what they can do with their business website hosting to lower their business carbon footprint.”

The WINS switchover was handled by our web developer, Jacob Stow. We asked Jacob why he recommends making the transition to a green hosting company;

“The internet produces around 2-4% of global carbon emissions and is one of the fastest growing sources of emissions. As well as creating websites that are as lightweight and efficient as possible, we can also choose to host them with data centres that use a sustainable source of energy.”

“My aim was to be able to offer my clients green hosting as standard, using a UK based data centre that uses 100% renewable energy, rather than offsetting, and also performs at excellent speeds and scales on demand.”
 
“Moving to a new hosting company can be thought of as a daunting task, but it needn’t be; with the right planning making the switch can be quick and hassle free.”

If you’re feeling stuck about how to go about doing such a transition, get in touch with Jacob, and he can guide you through the process.

This type of ‘bigger action’ is a great example of what we can as individuals to create maximum impact in terms of helping the fight against the climate crisis. WINS Oxford Hub Lead, Thalia Carr, recently ran an event on ethical investing touching on this very point. Eco-friendly pensions, ethical banks, and green energy providers are all great ways to invest in the planet’s future and align your finances with your ethics.