This guide is intended for users who have chosen Infomaniak, a hosting provider committed to the planet: you will find below the details of the calculation method used to display CO2 on invoices, as well as tips to reduce your own digital footprint.

Preamble

• For Web hosting and Mail services, Infomaniak displays the amount of CO2 emitted annually, a figure based on a rigorous Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) method that adds two key factors:
  1. Material impact (Full life cycle)
     • Thanks to the emission factors of the ResilioDB database, the calculation includes the emissions generated during the manufacturing (BLD), transport (DIS) and end-of-life/recycling (EOL) of each piece of equipment (servers, RAM, disks, etc.).
  2. Energy impact (Actual consumption)
     • The actual electrical consumption of the servers is measured via the IPMI probes.
     • This energy is then converted into CO2 equivalent according to Infomaniak's specific energy mix, which is very low in carbon (11.77g CO2eq/kWh).
• The total impact is then distributed according to the unit of use of the clients (per hosted website or per mailbox).

How can you act at your level?

If the hosting provider optimizes its infrastructures upstream, the end user also plays a key role. Here's how to reduce the footprint of your services.

For websites

The goal is to minimize the energy consumption of the servers and the visitors' terminals:

• Technical optimization: Compress images, minify scripts, and use modern formats (WebP).
• Clean design: Limit autoplay videos, ads, and heavy scripts that consume bandwidth.
• Best practices: For WordPress, it is recommended to consult the GreenIT sheets.

For email

Email communication can also be optimized:

• Sobriety: Prefer plain text emails over HTML and limit heavy graphical signatures.
• Attachments: Prefer sending download links (via kDrive or SwissTransfer) to large attachments, or use the compressed PDF format.
• Cleanup: Unsubscribe from unnecessary newsletters and use tracking tools to avoid sending unopened emails.

It is recommended to regularly monitor statistics to improve ecological performance. In the meantime, while waiting for Infomaniak's future integrated tools, it is possible to audit the impact of web pages via GreenFrame.io.