## Introduction

Our planet needs our help; since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas and we’ve contributed to tremendous amounts of waste that doesn’t decompose such as plastic. 
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Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures. 
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Examples of greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change include carbon dioxide and methane. These come from using gasoline for driving a car or coal for heating a building, for example. Clearing land and forests can also release carbon dioxide. Landfills for garbage are a major source of methane emissions. Energy, industry, transport, buildings, agriculture and land use are among the main emitters.
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The amount of landfill is also now a contributing factor in destroying wildlife as we know it. If you’re familiar on the topic you might have seen the informative documentary called Plastic Ocean and how landfill containing plastic has seeping into our ocean.

## Our commitment

We are committed to helping save our planet today, before it’s too late, and as Sir David Attenborough has said before:

> “The future of humanity and indeed all life on earth depends on us”

Our commitments are:

- Carbon neutral where possible.
- Donate a portion of our yearly revenue to two aspiring charities.
- Cleaner hosting and optimal performance.

## Carbon neutral

We will protect the climate: we are carbon neutral today and want to be carbon negative in the not too distant future. We’re actively working on reducing our CO2 emissions, and we compensate for the footprint that is left.

## The Ocean Cleanup charity

Every year, millions of tons of plastic enter our oceans and the majority spills out from rivers. A portion of this plastic travels to ocean garbage patches, getting caught in a vortex of circulating currents. If no action is taken, the plastic will increasingly impact our ecosystems, health, and economies.

![The Ocean Clean Up charity](//images.ctfassets.net/bykn93yajwp4/5KOZ4hBgYQVmWQb5WvrUWF/b9f33593e3c8c918c781c56e9ee11ff1/help-us-save-our-planet-the-ocean-clean-up-turtle-charity.jpg)

The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit organisation developing and scaling technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. To achieve this objective, we have to work on a combination of closing the source and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean and doesn’t go away by itself. With that said The Ocean Cleanup has said that their job won’t be done till the ocean is rid of a plastic.

## One Tree Planted charity

Trees help clean the air we breathe, filter the water we drink, and provide habitat to over 80% of the world's terrestrial biodiversity. Forests provide jobs to over 1.6 billion people, absorb harmful carbon from the atmosphere, and are key ingredients in 25% of all medicines. Yet the mass destruction of trees—deforestation—continues, sacrificing the long-term benefits of standing trees for short-term gain.

![One Tree Planted charity](//images.ctfassets.net/bykn93yajwp4/6sbEKV5NzZMUe7jr75THTL/754621948792d62efe847ae055886ee4/help-us-save-our-planet-one-tree-planted-charity.jpg)

Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but they are disappearing at an alarming rate. Since 1990, the world has lost 420 million hectares or about a billion acres of forest and about 17 percent of the Amazonian rainforest has been destroyed over the past 50 years.

One Tree Planted is a non-profit organisation that is focused on restoring forests, creating habitats for biodiversity, and to make a positive social impact around the world.

## Cleaner hosting and better performance

You may not think about it often, but the internet uses a colossal amount of electricity. This electricity needs to be produced somewhere. In most countries, this means the burning of fossil fuels. This, in turn, means that the Internet’s carbon footprint has grown to the point where it may have eclipsed global air travel, and this makes the Internet the largest coal-fired machine on Earth.

The average desktop site is 1848 kb in size, so let’s say just 2 billion people (somewhere around 4 billion are connected to the internet) view 5 pages at that weight in a day. That would be about 1,500,000 GB of data transferred on a single day. Based on the 5 kWh energy consumption estimate, we’re looking at spending 17.6 million kWh of energy to use the web every single day. When you think about it like that it’s not hard not to see the ramifications of poor performance in applications that perhaps don’t have the greenest hosting and what that contributes to our e-waste.

One of our key partners, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is focused on efficiency and continuous innovation across their global infrastructure, as they continue on their path to powering their operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025. This is a huge step forward for hosting and with Vercel (the creators of Nextjs) utilising AWS for most of their architecture this is a double win.

On the back of greener hosting we are committed to being more cautious about performance by applying our knowledge in best practices to ensure that we have a better and green web today, for tomorrow.

Help us save our planet: through charities and technology