Simply Voting is Green
Simply Voting is the most eco-friendly online voting system in the world. Using our service helps your organization meet its envrironmental and sustainability objectives by reducing the carbon footprint of voting events as much as possible.
The Carbon Footprint
The carbon footprint is a measure of the impact an organization or event has on the environment, and in particular climate change. It relates to the amount of harmful greenhouse gases emitted through transport, land clearance, and the production and consumption of food, fuels, manufactured goods, materials, wood, roads, buildings, and services The carbon footprint is measured in kilograms of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent.
Holding a paper ballot election for 10,000 voters generates greenhouse gas emissions of over 500kg of CO2. That's equivalent to driving over 1000 miles in an average passenger car. The environmental cost increases to over 600kg of CO2 if you are mailing the ballot to voters.
Holding an election online is easier on the environment since there is no paper involved. If you can send voting instructions by email instead of the post, the outcome is even better. However an electronic election still has a carbon footprint because electricity is required to power the servers that host your voting website, the computers used by voters, and the global networks that connect them. Much of that electricity is created from the burning of fossil fuels, like coal, oil and natural gas, all of which emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. While many people may assume that websites have negligible carbon footprints, that is not the case. According to studies, the global carbon emissions due to information and communications technology are greater than those of the entire aviation industry.
Our Green Advantage
The good news is that we've lowered our carbon footprint as low as 2% of a typical website by making use of the following measures for our servers:
- Virtualization technologies
- Green hydro-electric power
- Exceptionally efficient data center design
- Optimized ‘Free cooling’
- IBM ‘Big Green’ engineering
Even more good news, Simply Voting is Green Certified by CO2Stats. That means the carbon footprint used by voters, our servers and the networks in between is measured and effectively neutralized with carbon offsets or renewable energy from wind and solar farms.
