Last night I posted a CO2 Stats Counter onto my page. I came across this while looking at Eco-Chick.com – the blog started by Starre Vartan, author of the soon-to-be-published The Eco Chick Guide to Life: How to Be Fabulously Green. We recently got the manuscript in for the book at the Progressive Book Club and David asked me to read and let him know what I think since I’m the one person in the office who really embodies the ideal audience (that and I really wanted to read it!). Just from skimming it alone, I’m already in love with it. It’s well written, practical, easy-to-follow, and accessible for any age. It’s more than just “buy vintage clothing and organic food” kinds of tips. It delves into the reasons to go vegetarian, or if you can’t stand to give up burgers, how to adapt your eating habits a bit at least to reduce your environmental impact, how to talk to friend and family about environmentalism without seeming pushy or evangelical, wide-sweeping, grand, important tips and topics to go green.
Anyway, I’ve somehow never previously stumbled upon Starre’s blog until now and saw the CO2 Stats Counter on her website. Started by two PhD candidates at Harvard and Yale – Alex Wissner-Gross and Tim Sullivan – the carbon counter not only approximates the amount of CO2 your website and its visitors emit through computer usage and server storage, but the two men offset the carbon for free. The CO2 Stats Project buys offsets from Sustainable Travel International for ever pound of carbon your site’s visitors use up.
As quoted in a Reuters article about the program:
“Wissner-Gross and Sullivan aim to make the entire Internet carbon-neutral, a couple of keystrokes at a time; they say the Internet is responsible for more than 100 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions annually. By contrast, U.S. power plants emit 2.79 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year. The CO2Stats own Web site has so far offset less than 2 pounds of carbon. Other sites where the tool is installed show comparable results. The widget’s creators pay out of pocket for the offsets but hope for sponsorship in the future.”
Although the basic widget is free, you can purchase a pro subscription for $9.95/month, thereby helping to sponsor the program and offset their individual costs of the project. With the purchase, you can customize your badge, get analytics of exactly what types of fuel and what percentage are used to power your site, auditable monthly offsets with renewable energy certificates, and your site gets listed as one of the “Greenest Sites,” possibly bringing in thousands of extra pageviews a month. I just did it. Notice my badge on the right side of the blog!
