| Commitments |
 | Oxatis and E-Commerce for the Good of the Planet |
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| According to a study by the Estia-Via, a Federal Polytechnic Institute based in Lausanne, Switzerland, shopping in online grocery stores would be much more environmentally friendly than traditional grocery shopping. This is what Marc Lolivier, General Delegate of the Fevad, a French association representing distance selling and e-business, brought to light at the beginning of 2008 in his annual report.
Recognizing the direct benefits of E-Commerce for the environment, Oxatis adds its high performance model of hosting a very large number of E-Commerce sites to this fundamental analysis. By proceeding in this manner, the reduction of CO2 emissions is further divided by 100 thanks to a shared server farm.
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| E-Commerce, The Environmentally Friendlier Way |
| What Marc Lolivier, General Delegate of the FEVAD, a French association representing distance selling and e-business, has to say about the subject:
"In particular, going through the Internet would reduce CO2 emissions by 8. So in 2007, and based on 446,000 deliveries, customers purchasing online should allow us to avoid 6,583 tons of CO2 emissions. Comparatively, it would take the equivalent of 449 hectares of forest, about half of the woods of Boulogne, to absorb that much in green house gases."
And what if buying on the Internet actually was "green"?
Those leading the study have no doubts about the environmentally friendly character of distance buying. According to them, "home delivery offers dramatic environmental benefits for society". In any case, it's some good food for thought that the Fevad is currently chewing on within the framework of a study dedicated to the impact of E-Commerce and distance selling on the environment and sustainable development, the results of which will be available in 2008.
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| Oxatis, Online E-commerce Solutions Provider, Reduces the Carbon Footprint by 100! |
| A computer that uses about 1200 W/h in electricity, including cooling and peripheral devices, can traditionally host one to five e-commerce sites, or 400 W/h per site on average.
Oxatis made it an obligation to surpass this average value, and the results are spectacular. The Oxatis platform pools the physical and energy consumption of thousands of merchants into a single set of servers. For obvious reasons relating to reliability, the machines are no older than 36 months old (12 months on average). This means that we are running on newer servers that use up less energy.
The hardware and software architecture of the Oxatis server farm revolves around 20 low consumption machines (300W/machine), representing a total energy consumption of 6,000 watts to power our servers. These machines are located in a latest generation Data Center where all cooling and associated equipment is optimized, thereby holding the total power usage down to 12,000 watts.
Today, this farm allows more than 6,500 merchants to trade safely online using 4 watts per hour. That's 100 times less than an E-Commerce site installed on a server hosted in conventional manner.
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| Carbon Footprint |
| To sum up, if you're an environmentally-conscious online consumer or merchant, buying or selling online allows you to actively participate in reducing carbon emissions.
This report shows an eight fold reduction in your carbon footprint just from buying on the Internet, and an eight hundred fold (!) reduction if you purchase on a site built with Oxatis.
Of course, the values at stake may seem small. But remember that E-Commerce still only represents about 10% of retail sales in the UK. In the long term, changing the way we sell and buy could have a tangible effect on the global carbon footprint.
It's never too late to start! |
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