With the world becoming more and more conscious of not only their own waste, but also the waste from the companies they buy their products from, many companies have taken this as a hint to go greener. This has slowly, but surely started to move into the hosting scene as a way of differentiating their services from other hosting sites. The thing is though is the transition from electric to win farmed electricity or solar power really going to make much of a difference both on the energy consumption and as a way to sway the choice of the webmaster?

In terms of what can be done in order to offset the cost of running so many served 24/7, there have been many advancements, from wiring that insulated the wiring better to wind farms and solar power panels on their roof. However, one of the newer ideas that has come about is the new ‘plant a tree’ idea.

A company that is unrelated to hosting has been allowing people to buy a “plant a tree” gift for other peoples. So in the same way you can adopt a penguin you can now support reforestation. This company has now been looking into expanding its business in order to reach a larger audience, one of the first ways was to get into Facebook, but now it seems that they are looking to team up with hosting accounts.

The idea is to have a little gift icon on the site so that webmasters can donate money to plant a tree in order to offset the cost of hosting. But the real question is, will this work and is it worth it? The fact of the matter is that only 1 in 10 trees survive the rain as the vast areas cleared create mud slides that simply take the saplings with them.