Our manifesto
Too much time, resources, code and energy is wasted. It’s time to start using the right sources! Here you read our code: the standards we use to measure every step we take to make the biggest impact on developers and the environment.
For developers
Impact
The code we write, the likes we give, the posts we share, the apps we run: our digital behavior has a big impact on the environment. An estimated 6.8 grams of CO2 is generated per page load. [ 1, 2 ] A tree consumes about 59.64 grams of CO2 a day. [ 3 ] That means visiting 9 web pages a day is enough to provide a tree with a day’s worth of work. You’d nearly have to plant a small forest daily to compensate for your internet usage.
Forest provides insights into the usage of resources (energy) of your APP per user and on the Forest platform. This knowledge allows us to take steps towards reducing the energy usage and helps us point out how code affects that.
Insights and awareness
Remember when it was just you, HTML, CSS and a bit of Javascript? Nowadays development is a lot simpler and, with that, more complex. As a developer, you are now faced with tens of frameworks, services and tools. Before you know it, you're wasting half your time on configuring all of those. We think that developers should focus on writing good code.
Our goal is to enable developers to focus on writing code, while doing less configuration and setup.
You're a developer, write code
Our internet runs on coal - just like steam engines and barbecues! The place we use to enjoy our meme's and write our code currently generates about 3,7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. [ 4 ] That's only data centers by the way. This is even more than the entire aviation industry!
Needless to say, the internet is here to stay. We don’t believe in using less (internet, energy, resources) as a general solution, but rather in using resources responsibly.
While awareness is important, not much will be accomplished with just that. Plus a lot of parties are already spreading awareness. Therefore, everything we do should result in more efficient resource usage to eliminate wasteful usage.
The internet runs on coal
You spent a lot of developing time on setting up and configuring the development and production environments. Be it installing nginx, PHP or migrating databases, local or on a server. We see this as superfluous tasks that just take up time. You might learn something from it, but often it's either a routine job (which should be automated) or you’re finding out why something doesn't work like you expected.
Forest takes away tasks like migrating/fixing databases, moving data between, setting up runtime applications (like PHP, etc.). All so developers can focus more on code without the hassle.
Get your time back
The name Forest comes from the idea of planting trees to compensate for the resources used. In the process we concluded that planting trees actually does not solve a lot, if anything. Therefore we believe a new mindset is necessary. A mindset in which, like in any company, talented employees and good culture are important, offering payment in return and as an investment for that. The same goes for our servers, doing a lot of work; a product not only of human ingenuity but also of Earth and its resources. While we forget to say: “That’s great work steel! Thanks Earth. Here’s your payment in return”. Not by merely throwing dollars at it but by actually improving and paying back, with interest. Like a good business deal where all parties involved benefit.
It starts with making sure we use as much green energy as possible, refurbishing servers that are still perfectly working and getting resource waste to a minimum. We create a community around this idea and a circular economy around hosting, data centres and hardware. [ 5 ] Examples of this are: generating power using the heat of hardware, making the hardware reusable in parts and incorporating resource passports in the chain. [ 6, 7 ]
In order to eliminate waste we need brains and an (open-source) movement.
A good deal for Earth
Your data is yours! You should be able to get it both in and out the Forest platform.
All in one place, without lock-in
Sources
