Eco Domain (.eco) author avatar Eco Domain (.eco)

2023 Impact Report

In our second annual report, we are excited to share the progress that we are making towards the goals that we set in support of the .eco community.

Bikes parked in from of a train station in Amsterdam

In a world increasingly focused on sustainability, our commitment to fostering a greener, more responsible internet continues to be at the core of our mission. As the stewards of the .eco domain extension, we take pride in not only providing a digital home for environmentally conscious organizations but also in driving positive change for our planet.

This annual report is a testament to our dedication to transparency, accountability, and sustainability. It highlights the environmental, social and governance actions we have taken over the past fiscal year (October 2022 - September 2023). We share the progress that we’ve made towards the targets we set in last year’s plan and our renewed goals for next year.

2023 Impact Highlights

Climate Change stripes - increase in global temperatures since 1850

Climate Action

This year, we fulfilled our pledge to make .eco certified carbon neutral. Working with our partners Inhabit.eco and zeroCO2, we completed an audited review of our carbon footprint and secured more than double the carbon credits required to offset our estimated emissions.

As part of our carbon neutral certification, we set a goal of reducing our Scope 3 GHG emissions by 4% this year. We fell slightly short of this target with a 3.7% reduction. However, we’ve learned quite a bit through the process of working to reduce our footprint. We’re looking forward to sharing those learnings with you soon along with publishing the details of our 2023 GHG footprint.

We have a goal of increasing the awareness of the climate impact of websites and domain names within the .eco community and beyond. We have published 5 articles this year on this and related topics. We also conducted 10 free carbon website audits for members of the .eco community, providing targeted and actionable advice about how they can reduce the climate impact of their websites.

One way that we have measured progress towards this goal of increased awareness is by assessing the adoption of eco-friendly hosting providers powered by renewable energy within the .eco community. We set a target of 40% of active .eco domains using green hosting this year, up from 31% last year, and we’re grateful that the .eco community has hit this goal.

Climate protest

Community

Environmentalism is a global concern and the .eco community needs to be open to everyone in the environmental movement. Cost should not be a barrier to join. To alleviate this barrier, we relaunched the .eco domain grant program. Eligible non-profits can apply to receive a free .eco domain. This year, we granted 2 .eco domains. We would love to grant more, so if you know of suitable organizations, please encourage them to apply.

Since we launched .eco, we have always wanted a way for members of the .eco community to interact directly. In support of this, we launched a Slack community. Currently we have around 100 .eco members who have joined. If you are interested in joining, you can find a link on your .eco profile Account page.

We also named and featured 8 .eco champions this year. We started a new process of interviewing champions and sharing their inspiring stories. If you have a great story to share and are interested in becoming a .eco champion, please get in touch.

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Compliance

One of our key responsibilities is to ensure that .eco stands for the values of the environmental community. We created the .eco profile system to counter issues of abuse, misalignment and greenwashing by giving transparency into the intended use of .eco domains and the entities that own them. Members of the environmental community and the general public can report .eco profiles or .eco websites that contain inaccurate information that is in violation of .eco's acceptable use policies. When we receive a notification of a potential misuse of a .eco domain, we launch an investigation and, if necessary, contact the owner to remediate the issue.

This year, we received 23 reports that we investigated, 8 involved following up with the domain owner. There have been two cases of .eco domains being suspended in the last 12 months.

.eco continues to have among the lowest levels of DNS abuse in the domain industry.

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Impact Goals for 2024

Complete B Corp recertification

B Corporation and .eco are naturally aligned. There are many members of the .eco community who are B Corp certified. We were B Corp certified when we launched .eco and set a goal to start the recertification process in last year’s Impact Plan. We submitted the completed B Impact Assessment in July and our application is currently in the Evaluation phase. We are looking forward to sharing the news once our B Corp status is approved!

Recertify as carbon neutral

Our process of recertifying is already underway and should be complete before the end of the year. We have already estimated our carbon footprint for the 2022-2023 fiscal year and will publish the ISO 14064-aligned Greenhouse Gas Emission report once it has been audited. We will target a further 4% decrease in our Scope 3 GHG emissions from our 2022 baseline.

More .eco domain grants

With the grant program launched, we would like to be able to grant more .eco domain names to eligible organizations. We will continue to find venues to promote this program. Please help us grow this community by encouraging others to apply

What do you think?

We are privileged to operate the .eco top-level domain for and on behalf of the global environmental community. Our objective is to provide more visibility into how the .eco registry is working to serve this community. If you think that there are things that we should focus on, please let us know.