One hundred percent of the electricity in our data centers for our WEB.DE and GMX brands comes from renewable sources (“green electricity”); their regular operations have thus been emission-free since 2018. We use energy management systems to control our main consumption areas. Our data centers are certified in accordance with the international ISO 50001 standard.

In addition, our data centers implement energy-efficient hardware and power-saving processors to avoid waste heat, and they require less energy for cooling.

One of the most important sustainability issues in the digital industry is the energy-efficient use of servers, which offers great potential for saving both energy and valuable resources. Our access statistics for the WEB.DE and GMX portals have almost doubled in recent years, and the volume of stored data – including emails, images, and videos in the cloud – has almost tripled since 2017. At the same time, we offer our customers many new products and features such as Smart Inbox, netID, full-text search, and improved spam detection.

Despite this strong growth and expansion of services, we have actually reduced our number of servers by developing and building our own private cloud solution in our data centers. This has resulted in much more efficient use of the existing server capacity. We use our computing capacity dynamically, according to demand. That means we provide only as much power as the applications (such as spam scanning, logging in, or processing e-mail attachments) require at that particular moment. This optimizes system utilization in terms of energy efficiency and storage space, and saves valuable resources. At the same time, we can easily absorb peak loads. Furthermore, systems that are not currently required are disconnected from the power supply and are only switched on when urgently needed, and the server fan speed is automatically reduced significantly when the load is low.

As for our data centers, we also use 100% green electricity in our office buildings. Shared devices such as printers switch off automatically after a few minutes of inactivity. Energy-saving default settings are installed on employees’ laptops, and the company smartphones are refurbished. There are also various measures and recommendations in place for our employees. These include, for example, switching off electronic devices such as computers and monitors when leaving the office, and also adjusting the room temperature when the office is not occupied.

To recycle internally used IT hardware such as laptops, monitors, and servers in an environmentally friendly way, we have been sending end-of-life devices to our partner AfB since 2011. The devices are refurbished wherever possible and resold, i.e. returned to the consumer cycle. AfB is a recognized inclusive company. Around 50% of their workforce throughout Europe consists of people with disabilities who are also subject to social security contributions on the primary labor market.

Our servers are used for a very long time, usually until the end of their service life. Components are repaired where possible, and the servers are reconditioned and reused. This extends the life of the equipment and saves resources such as rare earth elements and metals. Recycling is considered the final step in resource management. Hardware that cannot be remanufactured is recycled by AfB partners in such a way that rare raw materials can be extracted where possible and returned to the material cycle.

Our core product is the email inboxes for the WEB.DE and GMX brands, including additional storage space. The infrastructure for digital communication and the necessary data centers produce emissions and consume natural resources. To keep the environmental impact as low as possible, we implement the abovementioned measures, such as using green electricity and increasing energy efficiency. At the same time, digital content sent via email – for example, digital brochures or newsletters – helps replace letters and bulk mail, thus saving valuable resources. Another product, De-Mail, facilitates secure and legally binding communication with companies and public authorities, thus eliminating the need for paper forms and their delivery by road and air.