If the Internet was a country, it would be the 7th largest producer of CO2.

This quote shocked many of you last week when I shared it and it still shocks me now. ‘From data centres to transmission networks to the devices that we hold in our hands, it is all consuming electricity, and in turn producing carbon emissions’ websitecarbon.com.

When I first found this out last year while going through the B Corp process I decided to check out how much CO2 my website produced. For my financial year 2021/2022 it produced 0.75kg of CO2 equivalent.

As much CO2 as boiling water for 101 cups of tea.
The amount of carbon that 1 tree absorbs in a year.
Enough electricity to drive an electric car 11km.

Check yours out at www.websitecarbon.com

Now this is just my small website which doesn’t (yet!) receive huge numbers of page views. Imagine what the likes of Amazon generates!?!

Last year I decided to move my Squarespace site to be hosted by GreenGeeks but this did not go smoothly. Firstly, I discovered that you can’t just transfer a Squarespace site, it’s not that simple - why would it be? I’m a company of one and IT is not my expertise but I pushed on with determination, I’m pretty good at figuring things out. I learnt all about domains, MX records, DNS settings and more. I was so proud when everything was set up, a real achievement. I even told the mums on the school run who just stared at me.

BUT, I then lost all my emails and my site didn’t show up! Not good when you’re trying to grow your business and go through the B Corp accreditation process, I do exist, honestly!! It was an absolute nightmare, I was missing work and also potential projects.

So, unfortunately, I decided to back up and return to Squarespace and that’s where I still am today. However, this year I plan to work with someone to do this for me - an expert! It’s a really important move but one which requires time and thought.

Let me know if you’ve had any experiences, good or bad :)