Zeronet is making a name for itself as the country’s very first sustainable internet service provider. We talk to Co-Founder Karim Hussona on the decision to be sustainable and how they aim to be ‘carbon-zero’.

In a country saturated with internet service providers, Zeronet is making its point of difference clear from the start by focusing on being sustainable through carbon offsetting.

Hussona, Co-Founder of Zeronet is a successful businessman who says the internet service is part of a “continuation to create a better world”.

Originally a Founder of Compass, the small telecommunications provider back in the 90s was the launchpad for Hussona to create his successful network of businesses.

But it was not until recently when he was diagnosed with bowel cancer that he began to look into ways he could have a positive impact through business.

“I’d had a successful and rewarding business career but decided that I wanted to do something a bit more meaningful,” he says.

Inspired by his daughter who is passionate about climate change, Hussona took it upon himself to research how he can use his own resources to make an impact.

“We’ve started investing in a number of different projects. We’ve planted thousands of trees and we have started rolling out a distributed solar generation operation, putting thousands of solar panels on commercial rooftops to create clean energy,” he says.

Creating a sustainable internet provider was a natural progression for Hussona alongside two other Founders who are entrepreneurs in the technology and payment space, Paul Carter and Dave Spicer.

Read more: The trend of climate innovation in New Zealand

Combining their experience in the industry and their interest and commitment towards a sustainable future, Zeronet was born and ready to break boundaries.

He adds that creating an essential internet service provider that was sustainable gave customers the opportunity to partake and contribute towards a better future.

“It means that the customers themselves can be contributing. They can be not only browsing in a carbon neutral way, but they contributed towards something that is trying to fix the problem,” he says.

But how does Hussona and Zeronet work towards carbon offsetting and becoming carbon zero?

“On the one hand, it’s quite alarming. On the other hand, there are lots of emerging technologies that are coming that will hopefully reduce our impact and at some point, allow us to reverse the damage that we’ve done.”

Hussona says that unlike other businesses who purchase credits based on their emissions, Zeronet goes a step further.

Alongside offsetting carbon credits through tree planting and its buildings being solar powered, Zeronet is investing on projects and schemes that “will actually recover some of the carbon that’s in the atmosphere that will generate renewable energy to offset any energy that we might consumer”.

The company’s tree planting goal is the focus, with Hussona predicting that over the lifetime of five trees, between eight to nine tonnes of carbon will be removed from the atmosphere.

“We’d like to get to the point where we are, through the efforts of our customers, removing at least 5,000 tonnes of carbon a year.”

Over the next five years, Hussona says they estimate over 200,000 trees will be planted thanks to Zeronet.

The internet provider is also working towards minimising waste by encouraging customers to reuse and recycle their routers. 

“We are truly carbon neutral because we are actually creating the attributes to offset any emissions that are used to create the power that we might consume,” he adds.

With Zeronet launching in December 2022, Hussona hopes that in a year’s time the company will expand its product range with the addition of telephone and other internet plans in the mix.