Intelligent Offsets: Planting Our Way to A Cleaner Planet

The dawn of a greener age

This week, all of us at ServInt are proud to celebrate Earth Week. While environmental protection is always on our mind, this week gives us the opportunity to focus on our actual accomplishments and lay out a strategy to take it one step further.

Planting the Seed

Earlier this month, ServInt completed its reforestation goals for the first quarter of 2010. Our goal is to not only be carbon neutral, but to be carbon positive. In our case that meant that we would go from offsetting 110% of our VPS line’s carbon emissions to 110% of our entire inventory across product lines. This year, amid our rapid growth in the DC area and our expansion to the West Coast, we plan to do it again.

Now, we know that offsets are a controversial topic for some. Many offsets are vague with labyrinthine paths to the sources and companies they claim are actually delivering renewable energy. We know there are issues with the efficiency of many of these organizations, whether the funds one donates are being used to effectively advance clean energy or whether the funds are getting lost in administration.

But we had to do something. Having been in business for more than 15 years, our customers expect premium performance. That requires the best pipes in the world, and there are few places with better connectivity than the Washington, D.C. metro area and the Los Angeles metro area. Instead of building a cheap warehouse and laying fiber out in the middle of nowhere, the nature of our business required us to build our data centers where the traffic is and that meant building in urban areas.

For months, we exhaustively researched where to purchase offsets and from whom. We  didn’t want to throw money out into the ether and claim we were helping the planet. We wanted accountability, efficiency, and a partnership with an organization that was actually doing good.

A Growing Company, In More Ways Than One

ServInt is an official corporate patron of American Forests.

ServInt, along with companies as distinguished as Ikea, Mcdonalds, Paul Mitchell, and Coca-Cola, offsets its carbon emissions by planting trees that, over time, gobble it back up. As we mentioned before, we offset 110% of the carbon emissions of our entire product line on top of our ongoing integration of more energy efficient equipment and our development of software to aid us in pursuit of staying carbon positive!

American Forests has a Four Star rating from Charity Navigator in both its Organizational Efficiency (the percentage of its revenue that is used for its mission as opposed to administrative costs) and its Organizational Capacity (its ability to grow effectively).

ServInt is a company that cares about the planet. We have a reputation to uphold, and as such we are proud to partner with American Forests for the third year in a row!

Click here to learn more about American Forests.

Photo by gilderic.