Key takeaways
- The digital carbon footprint of the internet is real, measurable, and driven by everyday browsing.
- We're offsetting the emissions produced by the Shift community from July to December 2025.
- This isn’t a one-off, Shift will offset its digital carbon footprint every quarter going forward.
- These first offsets support verified climate projects through Carbonzero, including rainforest protection and low-carbon cement.
Treating sustainability like a craft problem, identify the issue, measure it, and fix it, leads to real progress, not optics.
We talk a lot at Shift about building things the right way. Usually, that conversation stays inside the frame of the browser. But the tools we build and the code we run don't exist in a vacuum. They live on servers, travel through cables, and consume energy.
Digital work has a physical cost.
More specifically, the digital carbon footprint of the internet is larger and more measurable than most people realize.
From July to December 2025, the Shift community generated 599 tonnes of carbon emissions. It’s a specific number, and for the first time, it’s a measurable one. Today, Shift is offsetting that entire amount. This isn't a one-off campaign. We’ve committed to a continuous cycle of accountability, offsetting our community’s impact every single quarter moving forward.
Inside the Carbon Meter: How Shift estimates and offsets your digital carbon footprint
The engineer behind Shift’s Carbon Meter explains how the tool estimates your browsing footprint, what the model includes, where it falls short, and how these insights drive carbon-neutral browsing.
Read MoreTangible action over optics
Last year, we launched the Carbon Meter to bring transparency to the energy cost of your browsing. We didn't want a vague "green" badge or a marketing slogan. We wanted a tool that used the Sustainable Web Design Model to show you exactly what your digital workflow looks like in terms of digital carbon footprint and environmental impact.
Measurement is only the first half of the job. We've spent the last working with Carbonzero to put those metrics into action.We’ve purchased verified carbon credits to support two primary North American climate projects focused on reducing the environmental impact of the internet and digital infrastructure.
One focuses on the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia. It protects an essential carbon sink and preserves one of the last temperate rainforests on earth. The other targets the industrial side of the problem by supporting low-carbon cement initiatives in the United States. We chose these because they represent a dual approach: protecting the natural systems we already have and decarbonizing the heavy industries we still need.
Accountability for the digital carbon footprint
Shift is built for people who value competence. You expect your tools to work, your layouts to persist, and your workflows to remain uninterrupted. We apply that same expectation to our environmental impact.
We’ve tracked our greenhouse gas emissions since 2023. This includes everything from the electricity in our office to the heat in our buildings and the travel required to keep the lights on. By partnering with Synergy Enterprises, we’ve ensured our accounting matches the reality of our operations.
We aren’t claiming to have solved climate change with a browser update. Instead, we treat our contribution to the digital carbon footprint like a bug in the system. You identify it, measure its impact, and deploy a fix.
Shift is officially carbon-neutral
Building better online lives also means building more sustainable ones, and that starts with owning our impact.
Read MoreWhy this matters for the maker
Sustainability often feels like someone else's problem, or worse, a corporate PR exercise that happens in a boardroom. But as part of the Redbrick portfolio, Shift is a Certified B Corp and treats this as a standard part of the build process. When you use Shift to manage your projects, you're using a tool that acknowledges the world outside the screen.
Total UI control includes visibility into the data you generate. Whether you’re in the Builder or navigating Spaces, the Carbon Meter acts as a quiet persistent reminder that even the most efficient digital workflows leave a mark.
This commitment to offset 599 tonnes of emissions is a practical step toward reducing our shared digital carbon footprint. It’s about being a responsible steward of the technology we build and the planet it depends on. Follow along on our carbon neutral journey here or download Shift Browser to start monitoring your own impact in real-time.
