Want to know more about what we’re doing, and why?

• What are we ‘actually’ doing?
• Caveats (we’re not perfect)
• How does this stuff get done?
• Why are we doing this?
• How can you help?

We’re a small team here at Sitebulb, but we try to do the right thing by supporting the people, initiatives and causes that matter to us.

We’re currently in a global climate crisis, and we believe that businesses have a responsibility to do something about it. Like every business, we ourselves have an impact on the environment. So our baseline for being more sustainable is to ensure our own workforce is ‘climate positive’.

But we also know that Sitebulb is responsible for a wider carbon footprint. Our auditing software is used by SEOs around the globe - each audit they run uses energy via their computer and has an environmental impact. So each month, we fund environmental projects to offset the impact of our users' SEO auditing.

Not satisfied with just addressing our current impact, we want to invest in a better future too. So for every person that takes out a free Sitebulb trial or newsletter subscription, we plant a tree.

This means we’re covering our current carbon footprint and making an environmental impact in the present, whilst also planting trees to help build a more sustainable future.

Each month, Sitebulb:

• Offset the carbon footprint of our own team
• Offset the carbon footprint of every Sitebulb paid user
• Purchase a tree for every new Sitebulb trial
• Purchase a tree for every newsletter signup

What are we ‘actually’ doing?

Offsetting the Sitebulb team

Offsetting our own team’s carbon footprint was the obvious place to start. We’ve actually gone a step further than this by making our workforce ‘climate positive’.

To do this, we use Ecologi’s ‘Intermittent jet setter’ plan which covers our team’s work and personal carbon footprint, as well as business travel.

We rely on the experts to do the calculations, but this covers all of our team's activity, and then some!

Offsetting your SEO auditing

When we started thinking about this, we had ambitious plans to track all of our users' Sitebulb usage, calculate the carbon footprint, and offset it all.

Frankly, we were a bit delusional. Much cleverer people than us are doing extensive research and writing academic papers on how to calculate this stuff. We came to the conclusion that:

1. Whatever result we came up with is unlikely to be ‘truly’ accurate.
2. We’d probably burn a rainforest in the process.

So instead, we took widely agreed figures, did some rudimentary calculations, and a lot of rounding up...

• The average power rating of a desktop computer is 80-200 Watts, so we base our calculations on 200 Watts (a laptop is only 20-65 Watts).
• Based on constant usage for 8 hours, this equates to 1,600 kWh per day.
• Multiplied by 365 days of the year, that’s 584,000 Watts, so let’s round it up to 600 kWh.
  (Well above UK Gov data of 185 kWh/ year average power consumption for a desktop and monitor)
• Based on 0.25 kg of CO2 per kWh of electricity (based on UK Gov data, rounded up), 600 kWh equates to 150kg of CO2 emissions.
• Divided by 12 to give an average month, that’s 12.5kg CO2 per month
• Then just to be safe, we round that up to 15kg of CO2 per user, per month which we offset.

So in reality, we’re offsetting 8 hours a day of PC usage for each one of our users - not just their SEO auditing.

Trees for trials

If you register for a free trial, and give Sitebulb a go, we’ll plant a tree.

We reckon that this is a pretty good deal. It costs you nothing. We get the opportunity to show you how good Sitebulb is (spoiler: we reckon it’s pretty damn good). And together we invest in our environment by planting a tree.

Caveats (we’re not perfect)

Our calculations are far from perfect, but that’s not what we’re aiming for.

We know that some users have beasts of machines which demand much higher power usage, some have multiple monitors, and a small number occasionally run audits 24/7. However, we also know that many Sitebulb users run laptops with much lower than average power consumption, and only use the tool occasionally.

In short, we know there will be outliers to the averages we’ve used, and they will differ around the world. But we’re confident in the way that we’ve carried out our calculations - always using the top end of average ranges, and rounding up at each stage. We’ve also assumed that our users work 365 days a year. Because SEO never sleeps, right?

How does this stuff get done?

Patrick wasn’t too keen on spending his days with a spade in-hand, planting trees. So we went to plan B...

We work with an environmental organisation called Ecologi, that provide climate action solutions.

We decided to work with Ecologi after a number of personal recommendations, seeing their work & credentials, and generally being impressed by the transparency of what they’re doing.

At the end of each month, we total up our figures to calculate the number of CO2 tonnes to offset and number of trees to plant. We then place an order with Ecologi who in turn, fund projects on our behalf.

Each month, we support two different projects, selected by Ecologi. For example, below you can find full details of the two projects we funded in August:

• Producing electricity from solar energy in Vietnam
• Protecting and restoring the Pacific Coast of Colombia

On our Ecologi profile page, you can see exactly where our investment has gone - right from the top-level numbers, down to details of specific projects we’ve funded, tonnes of CO2e reduced, and even maps of exactly where trees are planted.

Why are we doing this?

In short, we feel it’s our duty to play our part in tackling the climate crisis - it’s the right thing to do.

Sometimes, we prefer not to shout about the things we do. But when it came to doing our bit for the environment (and the future of the whole bloody world!), we decided that it was something we needed to get our users, and the wider SEO industry involved in.

Obviously we’re not completely altruistic. We do hope that this makes our users love us more, and that some of you that take out free trials get hooked on Sitebulb. But if we get to do good for the environment in the process, then that seems fair, right?

How can you help?

1. Share! 
   The more people that get involved, the more trees and carbon offsets we buy, so please share far and wide! It costs nothing to register for a Sitebulb trial or newsletter, and we’ll plant trees for every person that does. Sharing has never been so caring!
2. Gift more impact
   If you’d like to add to the Sitebulb forest or carbon offsets, you can do just that here. (You can even add your name, too!)
3. Create your own Ecology account
   Want to go a step further? Why not sign up to Ecologi yourself, to offset even more of your own business (or personal) impact.