Ethereum: the Polluting Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

You may know Ethereum or Bitcoin are ‘bad’ for the environment. You may have seen the public outrage after a famous person tweets about crypto’s sustainability issues. And you may have experienced the price swings after the Pope or Elon Musk post about blockchain’s green problem.

If that’s you, then you understand the premise of this article. However, very few people truly get how gargantuan of a problem we’re dealing with here.

Let’s go over the impact of Ethereum — and let’s do it by comparing it to everyday things like flights to your favourite resort or binge watching Netflix.

Ethereum’s Impact Explained

Ethereum has become the gold standard for DeFi and a fan favourite, outgrowing Bitcoin in the past year. If you googled something about the carbon footprint of cryptocurrencies, you would probably find hundreds of articles about Bitcoin — and that’s fair. But we want to bring some attention to Ethereum — a digital asset that is not as commonly mentioned for its detrimental climate effects.

For starters, Ethereum has a carbon footprint of a whole country of Lebanon. Let that sink in: supporting Ethereum’s transactions requires as much as supporting daily activities of 6.5 million people. That’s 6.5 million people driving to work every day, flying several times a year, manufacturing goods and providing services, watching TV, and forgetting to turn off the light in their backyard.

You may not be impressed — after all, that’s just absolute figures for the entire Ethereum network. Let’s look at a single Ethereum transaction — for example, transferring your funds from a wallet to an exchange like Coinbase. Every time you transfer ETH, a single transfer consumes as much energy as a typical US household consumes in 3 days. Again, that’s electricity used for lighting, cooking, cleaning, leisure and binging Netflix. For 3 days straight.

A single Ethereum transaction is also equivalent to the carbon footprint of 105,033 VISA transactions. Meaning, if you buy a coffee using ETH, the greenhouse gas emissions from that purchase is equal to 105,033 people making the same purchase with VISA. That’s one person producing an impact of a Michigan Stadium packed with people — the biggest stadium in the US and western hemisphere.

What’s our point? Well, we know blockchain is the future, but it has a big climate problem that prevents DeFi’s mass adoption. We also know that increasingly climate conscious people are not willing to openly disrespect the future of their children.

Luckily, we have the answer. Brokoli offsets the climate impact of your transactions by planting trees, investing in renewable energy projects, and financing e-waste recycling initiatives. The best part? You don’t have to change a single thing about your daily DeFi activities — just use our platform to access your favourite DEXs and dApps.

About Brokoli Network

Brokoli is an impact-to-earn NFT metaverse where climate impact makes you money.

Your DeFi transactions on Brokoli plant NFT Trees: a tradable asset that earns passive income.

Brokoli’s core: Environmentally friendly gateway into the most popular DEXs and dApps.

API: Any blockchain platform (centralised or decentralised) can implement our API to allow users to opt-in to a small climate fee that offsets their transaction’s footprint.

Digital Forest / Brokoli Impact Credits: Users receive NFTs based on trees they have funded the planting of by using our products and completing daily quests. Digital NFT forests will be tradable as Brokoli Impact Credits: Corporate Social Responsibility standard loosely pegged to real forests and purchased by corporate partners.

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