Our strategy

Optimizing your personal carbon footprint requires being open to new things and experimenting. That also includes accepting that one might not always get it right on the first try - this is something we also stick to when it comes to Project Count.
One of the main motivators for setting this site up was to create a playground where we can experiment with sustainable alternatives, document our findings and share them with the world. Ready to join us?

Measuring our footprint

Our Computers: We each have a MacBook Pro 13-inch from our day job. We think it's reasonable allocate 10% of it's embodied carbon footprint to Project Count. (2x 32,6 kg = 65,2kg).

Computer Usage: The Macbooks produce about 4g CO₂e per hour, the servers and network are estimated to use another 37g CO₂e per hour. Since we currently run this as a hobby, we estimate around 12h a week or 48h per month. This adds about 2 Kg CO₂e per month. Data from The Carbon Footprint of Everything

Additional electricity on site: We also use light, smartphones and sometimes external monitors for our work. However we only purchase green electricity (carbon neutral balance sheet wise) and have recently purchases a balcony solar plant to improve this even further (more on the carbon amortization here). Therefore we do not add CO₂e here.

Hosting: We have two servers, running on Codesphere where Timo and I have our day jobs. The Equinix data centers we use are exemplary when it comes to their sustainability targets. 95% (globally) and 100% (Americas and EMEA) renewable energy usage. They have signed ambitious science based target, including reducing scope 3 emissions through a 66% supplier quota with their own science based targets. In Europe they aim to go a step further, becoming climate neutral by 2030 as part of a new green deal initiative. While we cannot currently verify their claims independently, feel free to explore their documentation yourself: Equinix report
According to websitecarbon our site produces around 0.21g CO₂e per visit, which is less than 77% of the tested websites. With 5.000 monthly page views (which we are far from :D) that would only add up to 12,8 Kg CO₂e per year.



Heating: We do not have an office and our home-office usage only warrants a small portion of residential heating to be allocated to Project Count. We have been able to reduce the heating thanks to reflective radiator foil. For January and February the average monthly heating for the entire apartment was 180 kWh. Let's allocate 5% (based on 12h a week, one room) = 9 kWh * 400g CO₂e/kWh = 3,6 Kg per month.
Waste, Shipping, Land Use: Since we are just starting out we don't feel confident enough here to do a reasonable estimation. We will update this as our operations scale.

Reducing our own footprint

We recently made a last minute decision to purchase a 600W balcony solar panel from Netto-Online because it was on sale for 650 EUR.
The first amazing thing we found out was that actually our municipality Bonn actually subsidizes these types of balcony solar installments with up to 600 Euros. Our application was approved within a week, meaning the entire setup (including the installation frame etc.) only cost us around 800 - 600 = 200 Euro. How cool is that? 😎 We expect savings on the electricity bill of around 200 Euros per year alone. Read more in our blog post, where we document our experience and collected energy on a regular basis here.