Ok my office and my home are both off grid completely, powered by solar and wind with a backup generatror -- so heres the question. Am I green? Or is the guy buying carbon credits green? Or my neighbor with no generator? I was looking at the posts here, and wondering just what being green means! Sorry about the typing cat on keyboard! Or does my 22 acres of trees count to offset my servers? Is there any place/way to figure this out? Off grid means batteries and home made diesel so am I REALLY green? Whole durn green things got me confused! And not off grid for green BTW for self sufficiency (and the Electric company wants over 10k to bring me electric).

ya - if you call yourself green - then you are - is there really standards?

i would say you are green if you are using alternative energy sources.

There are nothing on this technology world that is absolutely green. SO answer will be. NO YOU ARE NOT GREEN.

We go should back in the time of dinosaurs if we want to be green :D

Your green :)

If your green you may want to see a doctor. But your business seems green.

Being green can have as much to do with effecient usage of power as it does to where the power comes from. Personally, I would never use solar or wind to power servers, because servers need reliable power. I tend to focus more on reducing current. Things like using the latest CPUs instead of old power ungry ones can make a big dent in how much current is used. Additionally, using virtualization properly can really help reduce the current draw. These are ways to be green regardless of where the power comes from.

Cloud hosting is green. I mean, just look up into the sky! That's where your server sits! :)

Cloud hosting is green. I mean, just look up into the sky! That's where your server sits! :)

Sky is blue ... and the clouds are white or gray... how does this work?

But to address the original message, I'd say being proactive about the environment, such as solar and wind power is definitely considered green. Obviously, like anything, there are extremists who feel it's 100% or nothing, or the people that will blend their everyday lifestyles to fit the needs to better the quality of people around them. Lastly, there are the ones who will go buy a V12 S600 Gas guzzler tomorrow and not car. Everyone has their own agenda!

My vote, you're moderate green, but you're green!

Everyone really has their own standards and guidelines of what "green" really is. For example, I resell hosting using my VPS reseller and what I do is for every client when they buy hosting, I plant a small plant and keep it in a portion of my shop. I take a picture with their name next to their plant and send it to the client so it makes them feel good that when they bought hosting they helped plant another "tree".

This is just my opinion but... A hosting company should not call themselves green unless they are working 75-100% hard to be 100% green.

There is no standard over the green hosting so far. It is usually depends on the implementation of using green energy source and the run on using recycleable energy or cut down on the energy usages.

Few things really.
The amount of power the hardware uses. The efficiency of how your hardware is cooled and also the offset, some datacentres are building windfarms etc.

There are no standards at the moment however, just word. I'd say you qualify as 'green'.

It seems that everyone has their own opinions of what is green or not. If you are not polluting with your services and are actually using renewable energy then you are at least partially green.

Being really 100% "green" is nearly impossible. There is always something in your office or the data center that isn't green. Most materials used for your hardware are harmful to the environment, maybe you or your staff have to drive with a car to the data center every now and then, you also probably use non-recycled paper, etc. There are lots of things we use every day that are harmful to the environment.

Your company is just green-powered and I think nowadays it should be quite normal for hosting companies to use only renewable energy since trillions of servers do a lot of damage to the environment.
Our data center and office are powered just by water, wind and solar energy. It feels good to contribute to a healthier world.

You are completely off grid? Solar and wind powered? That's both awesome and expensive. Congrats!

That's extremely green. I mean the materials to generate such are polluting but that's mostly offset in five or less years of using such. Batteries are your big pollution pitfall. Although they tend to be highly recyclable.

Gasoline generators are fairly inefficient. All internal combustion engines are.

Carbon credits are mostly a farce. You can send me $50 for carbon credits and I'll save up for my solar setup :)

The Green Hosting thing is a bit like the marketing with organic produce. There is 100% organic, certified organic, and then just plain organic. Standards vary from country to country and organic does NOT necessarily mean that the food is grown without the use of pesticides. Standards can be all over the place. There doesn't seem to be a standard for green hosting either.

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Lexy
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Approval from a well respected NGO such as the WWF, or other non profit that is fully aware of your business practice and environmental impact can help. And to get that approval that would require you to work closely with them if their word's worth anything.

Carbon credit companies and so called green consultancies that stand to profit from approvals on the other hand have a conflict of interest in our opinion.

It's a complex issue, which I touched upon in another post on green hosting, with many different viewpoints and opinions.

If you have genuine intention and are working hard to realise that intention then good for you.

Best of luck.

There are nothing on this technology world that is absolutely green. SO answer will be. NO YOU ARE NOT GREEN.


I beg to differ, it can be done and will end up being done, I have been working on going green for some time. Not in the way of servers but living green and have done alot of research on the subject. Come to find out the only reason we can not personally go as you call it absolutely green is the big corporate companies who make money off of fossil usage to supply power and other reasons. They have made it so hard to be able to produce something out of the free resource we live off of and maintains our life on earth as we know it.
Go Green is a very good thing, and your comment was a negative comment on the subject, time machines have not been invented and therefore was a pointless remark to be made; As for the answer the original poster of this thread was not asking if he was absolutely green, which from what he has mentioned he is very close to being absolutely green he just needs to work away of not using the gens and possibly using water instead. From what what I am understanding is he considered a green host well I do believe so you are doing your part whether it was a forced decision or not you are indeed in many of our books a green host.

i don't think we have standard or dimensions or limits to an extent to call it as 100% complete green hosting, we actually trying to avoid further damage to earth like prevent diesel usage, reduce paper prints and so on and so forth - so there is no dimensions, let us continue and avoid damage to earth, and some step ahead also planting trees...