Win More Business By Going Carbon Neutral

Becoming carbon neutral can be hugely beneficial for winning new business, revealed dedicated web hosting company, Memset. The web host qualified as the UK’s first carbon-neutral ISP with the Carbon Neutral Company in August 2006. Since gaining the certification, they have seen business increase by 68% year on year.

A recent survey of 140 new customers revealed that one in three selected Memset as their web hosting company due to the carbon-neutral certification, and almost half said that Memset's commitment to energy efficiency was an important factor in their buying decision.

Kate Craig-Wood, managing director of Memset commented; “We decided to join the Carbon Neutral scheme last year, in part because we have always been conscience of our impact on the environment and wanted to do something to positively offset our carbon footprint, and also in order to gain a stamp of approval on our pre-existing commitment to developing energy-efficient hosting technologies. The fact that we have gained new business as a result really reflects the changing attitudes of businesses wanting to work with environmentally-friendly suppliers.”

In becoming Carbon Neutral, Memset worked with The CarbonNeutral Company to identify their ‘carbon footprint,’ or the approximate volume of CO2 generated by the organisation. It is calculated by assessing energy usage, business travel, and all components of the company’s operations that consume power or generate waste and by-products. Memset uses a very large amount of electricity for powering servers, and that formed the vast bulk of their carbon footprint.

The next stage in the process is to explore ways to reduce this footprint and energy use wherever possible. This has included a review of current suppliers to explore the viability of using ‘green’ suppliers or energy from renewable resources, and also examined efficiency technologies already in use such as Memset's Miniserver virtual machines. Finally in order to ‘neutralise’ unavoidable CO2 emissions, an organisation is encouraged to support a range of ‘offset projects’ to absorb or save the same amount of CO2 emissions as are being created.

Memset was initially supporting a sustainable forestry project, i.e. planting a tree each time it buys a new server, however, in response to concerns over the validity of forestry as a carbon offsetting measure, Memset are moving their investment to support a new methane capture project which has very measurable benefits (methane is 21 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas).

To find out how your business can become Carbon Neutral, visit: http://www.carbonneutral.com

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For further information, please contact:
Katie Olver
Momentous PR
T: +44 (0) 208 614 6816
M: +44 (0) 781 484 5376
E: kolver@momentousuk.com

For images to accompany this release, please visit:
http://www.memset.com/media_gallery.php

About Memset
Memset is an award-winning dedicated web hosting company. Established in November 2002, the company was the first to offer high quality, flexible dedicated server packages on a fair and scalable pricing model. The development of their Miniserver™ technology has enabled Memset to be recognised as the leading developer and supplier of virtual dedicated server systems in the UK.

Memset is Britain's first Carbon Neutral ISP, was voted best UK Web Host 2006 by PC Pro readers and recently won Surrey's Innovation in Business award.

For further information on Memset, visit: http://www.memset.com