Make your blog carbon neutral!

I received an email today from Christin Gerick of "Make it green," Germany, who told me about the "Make your blog carbon neutral" initiative that aims to make 500 blogs carbon neutral in honour of Earth Day 2010. So far, 230 blogs have already signed up, and they're looking to recruit more.

According to the Mach Grun (Make it Green) website, a study conducted by Alexander Wissner-Gross, PhD, a physicist at Harvard University and environmental activist, has found that an average website causes about 0.02g (0,0008oz.) of carbon dioxide for each visit. Assuming an average blog gets 15,000 visits a month, it has yearly carbon dioxide emissions of 3,6kg (8lb.). This can mainly be tracked back to the immense energy usage from (mainframe) computers, servers, and their cooling systems.

Christin explains that the goal of "Make it Green" is to reduce our blog's carbon footprint, firstly by raising awareness of the severe environmental damage caused by carbon emissions, and also to neutralise these emissions via tree-planting initiatives in Plumas National Forest in Northern California, an area that has been devastated by wildfires.

To help the replanting effort, they need the support of bloggers from all over the world. For every participating blog, they plant a tree. One blog - one tree. This is made possible by Make it Green, a German-based company called kaufDA, in cooperation with the Arbor Day Foundation.

I am just so amazed they they can actually do this, and I'm extremely excited at the prospect of my blog's carbons being offset by a tree in California! Thanks for informing me Christin, and I'm very happy to lend my support. I hope you will too. All it takes is a few easy steps to "Make it Green":

1. Write a blog post about the initiative + insert your favourite button
2. E-mail the link to your post to CO2-neutral@kaufda.de
3. They plant a tree for your blog in Plumas!

To learn more about how you can participate, please visit Mach's Grun's "How you can join" page.

Images via Mach's Grun.

PS: The naysayers can go shove it, it's my blog and my carbon footprint, so I'll do whatever I want with it.