Show your Good Side with a .ECO Domain Name [Audio]

Jacob Malthouse and Trevor Bowden, co-founders of .ECO

Monday 5 June 2017 is World Environment Day, and one of the newest Top Level Domain names is taking the opportunity to raise awareness for their unique proposition, and raise funds for environmental causes.

That domain registry is .ECO, and tomorrow they will donate 100% of the profits from domain name registrations to two environmental organizations working toward a healthier more sustainable planet.

To find out more, we invited .ECO co-founder Jacob Malthouse to join us on the Blacknight podcast. Click on the player below to play the podcast, or download it here: 18:47; 11MB; MP3.

Jacob and his co-founder, Trevor Bowden, worked on environmental projects for the United Nations in Geneva before becoming involved in ICANN, and learning about the developing model for governance of internet names and numbers. They realised that the advent of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) presented a unique opportunity, and they worked to build a coalition of environmental organisations who would support a domain registry with real green credentials.

“We describe ourselves as a member-driven organisation”, he explains.

Essentially, in a typical top-level domain there’s a contract between the registry who owns the domain and the regulator, ICANN. In our case, there’s a third party which is the environmental community, and that community is represented by a board and we report to that board. So what that really provides is a bedrock of trust to anyone that’s registering a .ECO domain. They know that if Trevor and I get hit by a bus, or eaten by bears … they know that whoever will replace us will be beholden to that community over the long term, so your investment in .ECO as a domain is really backed by the credibility of that community over the long term.

.ECO is more than a simple domain registry, says Jacob.

We debated with the community for almost two years about whether to make .ECO really broadly accessible, or whether to make it highly restricted, you know, the best of the best, you know, the ‘top gun’ of the environmental space. We ended up somewhere in the middle”.

Registrants pledge to support positive change for the planet and promise to be truthful when sharing environmental actions. Then they are invited to create a profile, which is listed at profiles.eco. Over 40% of registrants have created such profiles, making the site a window on the global environmental community.

.ECO is aimed at the small business community, Jacob explains. Despite the views of some, the ‘green economy’ is generating wealth for entrepreneurs and investors, as well as protecting the sustainability of life on earth. And environmental concerns are increasingly influencing business decisions for customers and business partners.

For World Environment Day on June 5, .ECO have pledged to donate 100% of the profits made on the day to two charities: the Wildlife Conservation Society, an international organisation, and to Nature Canada, in their home country.

We’ll have more about .ECO domain names in the months ahead on Blacknight.blog, including the Sailish Sea campaign which Jacob mentions on the podcast.

You can register .ECO domain names at Blacknight.

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