You may have noticed that we From This Day have been changing our approach. I wanted to share a little story about how this has happened.
We have always been a caring company, giving discounts to worthy causes and going the extra mile for our clients. It’s always been first and foremost in our ethics without us doing much of a song and dance about it.
But I have another site too, a GREEN side. When the UN climate change report came out in 2017 I was rocked to my core. Once I got out of my doldrums I thought I would use my skills in web development and created a blog called Little Green Ways, separate from my professional work. This side passion became an unpaid part-time job as well!
Little Green Ways was great when was starting out on my green journey. Sharing all the little tips that helped me make my life greener, I felt positive and helpful. I became an “ecobricks” trainer in my spare-time, helping people confront their plastic consumption. Lots of positive feedback on the way the blog had touched them and helped them make greener choices spurred me on. I even started out on some activism, diving down a rabbit hole of microplastics and becoming so incensed that I made a petition which made it to 17500 signatures, not too bad!
Nevertheless, I was becoming increasingly frustrated that what I was doing wasn’t enough. I was seeking a way of helping the environment and the future of our planet both in terms of ecocide and climate change. The things I was sharing on Little Green Ways were starting to feel either too small or far too complex to calculate what the real better choice was in terms of low carbon! What if, lost amongst the grey area, I encouraged people in the WRONG direction? And the impact I was having was hard to quantify.
But, by 2019 things were really starting to change and quickly, there was so much information available on becoming greener, it was suddenly everyday language from the most unexpected places! Little Green Ways’ time had come, it had played its small part and while I still dabble from time to time, it wasn’t satiating my need to help the climate crisis.
I considered looking for a more active role, perhaps green peace, or the green party. But didn’t feel that suited my skills which are rooted in technical work and communication.
Around this time, I started to become aware of the growing and overlooked issue of Digital Carbon. Of course, I already had selected green hosting for all my sites, but I was beginning to realise this was not enough! I was responsible for millions of bytes passing through the wires and sitting on hot servers! I was actively encouraging high traffic to sites which were not as efficient as they could be! I had a responsibility to do my part better, and in doing so raise awareness of the issues and contribute to the greening of the web.
From this point on I started looking at web development in an entirely different way. We had always prided ourselves on beautiful handcrafted sites but now I knew I also had to consider how to make new sites beautiful, fit for purpose AND low carbon.
I realised there was a place for me to use my specialist skills AND my passion together and started what I believe to be a ground-up solution to tackling the issues around digital carbon.