Our Commitment To A Sustainable Future
At Create we believe that it is the responsibility of all businesses (big and small) to take action and create a new path that is not “business as usual”. People deserve to have a choice and to be able to confidently say they were good ancestors. We want that too and that’s why we’re committed not only to reaching Net Zero as soon as we can, but being transparent and honest about what we’re doing so others can do the same.
When you choose Create you reduce your scope 3 digital emissions and support us to make substantial meaningful change through our endeavours. Small businesses together can change the future and be good ancestors.
Committed To Net Zero
We're committed to getting as close to a zero carbon business as we can and have signed the UK's SME Climate Commitment. This commitment is recognised by the United Nation's Race to Zero campaign.
Whilst the commitment requires us to achieve Net Zero before 2050 we're taking an "as soon as possible" approach and are also planning to offset the footprint we've created since 1999. We've put the CO2 up there and we must now remove it.
Carbon Neutral Hosting
We've chosen suppliers who are either using renewable energy now or offsetting with REGO credits. All our hosting suppliers are on a journey towards being fully powered by renewables in the next few years too.
Moving forwards the suppliers we choose are integral to this achievement and we plan to regularly review progress in this area.
#RiseUpDrawDown
There has never been a more urgent need for collective human change and as more extreme weather events occur we are beginning to see the effects of our activities and a glimpse at how hostile our home is likely to become. To begin reversing the climate crisis an estimated 2.4 trillion tons of greenhouse gases need removal from the atmosphere today.
This is why we’ve formed The Million Tree Pledge with 11 other likeminded small businesses and together we are going way beyond our own carbon footprint.
Interested in joining us?
Get in touch or read more about our pledge here.
A Climate Positive Team
Since 2008 we've been based in the Westergate Business Centre in Brighton. This BREEAM 'Excellent' rated building with ground sourced heating and it's own wind turbine has helped us keep our ecological impact small.
However as with other businesses we've been impacted by covid and currently the team work from their homes remotely. This means our carbon footprint is harder to track as everyone's usage is different.
Since October 2020 all our team members have been enrolled in a monthly climate positive subscription through Ecologi, a Bristol-based climate organisation. Each month the subscription plants 12 trees and offsets just under 1 tonne of CO2 per person. Ecologi include not only everyone's time at work, but any business travel, and the carbon footprint they may produce outside of work.
To take this a step further we applied this measure historically, calculating the hours worked by all our team members prior to October 2020 and then using the same principles as our monthly subscription we planted 40,000 trees and offset 800 tonnes of CO2 on their behalf. We're proud to be a climate positive workforce.
Reducing The Impact Of Websites
As data travels through the internet and particularly at the point of use by the visitor (if they aren't using green energy to power their device) the web emits greenhouse gases.
That's why over the last few years we've spent time optimising our tools behind the scenes to make websites faster and more efficient. There's always more to do on this front, but we're proud to say that sustainability plays a part in development decisions and we're building with efficiency in mind.
Here's just a few ways that Create websites are better for the web:
Optimisation
We optimise all images uploaded into different sizes and serve the most efficient one for the visitor's device. This means we're reducing the number of large unoptimised files sent around the web.
Speed
We use cacheing technology that ensures we don't have to generate busy pages from our databases every time they're
accessed by a new visitor. Loading is faster and less power is used.
Efficiency
We use a CDN infrastructure that helps us distribute website files via the server geographically closest to the visitor. This limits the journey, again saving power and reducing load times.
Raising Awareness
It’s easy to think of the web as something intangible that doesn’t truly exist. But in truth it’s an enormous amount of computers that are very energy intensive. With internet usage set to grow and grow over the coming years we need to do what we can as industry experts to not only use renewable energy, but to do so efficiently.
To make websites more tangible and transparent we built the Website Eco Checker. The checker enables anyone to quickly see if their website is running on green energy and from there begin a conversation with their website provider.
Websites That Pay Back
Internet usage creates emissions and so since the start of the year our hosting plans also include planting trees each month. This helps offset any third parties that are being used who aren't yet carbon neutral and goes some way to reducing the footprint created by the websites visitors.
We're expecting to plant over 16,000 trees in 2021 to support our customers in this way.
