It all started with an email from DreamHost. That domain name I got along with a years’ subscription to their hosting plan was about to expire, and I had to decide if I wanted to keep it. Along the same lines I also had to decide if I wanted to keep that hosting plan, the one I hadn’t really been using.

I never really had a problem with DreamHost, although some of my sites seemed slower there. But since I upgraded to WordPress 2.5 I had been having problems with editing posts, and a little research showed it was a host problem. So I headed over to DreamHost and found I didn’t get the same errors on a dummy WP 2.5 installation. Maybe it was time to give DreamHost another shot.

Then I remembered one of the original things that had attracted me to DreamHost, the fact they are striving to be a “Green” company and reduce their carbon impact. Seems they figured out running their company generated the same amount of carbon dioxide as 545 average-sized homes, and they decided to do something about it.

Green is a Popular Color

Although Kermit the Frog may have told us “It’s not easy bein’ green”, the staggering number of products today marketing themselves as “environmentally conscious might lead you to think otherwise.

Since The American Marketing Association’s workshop on “Ecological Marketing” in 1975, and the public’s adoption of the term “Green Marketing” in the late 1980s, the number of green products offered has skyrocketed. For example, the Energy Star label appears on home products from 11,000 companies.

It’s becoming easier to make your home “green” (and we’re not talking about paint here), and the products to help you do that have vastly improved since the early 1970s when “natural” laundry soap left your clothes dingy and water-conserving shower heads sputtered. Now compact fluorescent lightbulbs don’t flicker and hybrid cars don’t need to be pushed up steep hills.

How Green Are You?

The London-based market research firm, Mintel International Group, tells us around 12% of Americans are “True Greens” and 68% could be classified as “Light Greens”. But at the same time, Roper-Starch’s annual Green Gauge Report indicates 42% of consumers believe environmental products don’t work as well as mainstream products.

Nevertheless, the drive toward a sustainable future and the growing global concern over climate change is making consumers more and more environmentally conscious, and Mintel Research Director David Lockwood says, “All the corporate executives that we talk to are extremely convinced that being able to make some sort of strong case about the environment is going to work down to their bottom line.”

How Green is Green?

In spite of a growing interest among consumers and the increase of available quality products (corn-based disposable drinking cups, anyone?), a lack of controls in Green Industry leaves consumers skeptical as marketers run amuck. For many, the question “How green is Green?” remains unanswered. No universal standard must be met before a product can call itself green.

How Green is the Web?

I had always thought of my involvement in SEO, Internet Marketing, and Social Media as fairly green activities. I knew I wasn’t burning fuel to go to work, except maybe a disproportionate amount of coffee, but I hadn’t thought about the companies who host my websites and run the services I use.

While activities on the web don’t consume much in themselves, what are the tradeoffs? I’ve heard Google offers its employees a $5000 incentive to purchase hybrid cars, but how many gallons of gas does it take to get all their people to work and back home each day? What resources do companies like Microsoft and Apple consume? And of course, what is the carbon footprint of the hosting companies where the Internet lives?

A lack of understanding and regulation leaves too many grey areas in the production of environmentally-conscious products, and until the shades of grey are removed Kermit the Frog will still be right.

It really isn’t easy being Green, but I decided to stick with DreamHost. At least it’s a start.