Sustainability

Our commitment

Using AI has a real, if small, environmental cost: the electricity to run the models, the water used to cool the data centers, and the carbon from generating that power. We think a tool built for educators should account for that honestly. So Melaa does two things: we estimate the footprint of every AI request, and IncluSend funds the retirement of independently verified certificates in quantities that exceed those estimates, at no cost to your school or district.

How we estimate it

Every time the AI assistant answers a question, generates a worksheet, or drafts a family letter, we record exactly how many tokens it processed. Anthropic does not publish energy, water, or carbon figures for Claude, so we estimate them from the known compute stack and independent research. Claude runs on Amazon AWS (custom Trainium2 chips) and Google Cloud (TPU) data centers, which report high efficiency (PUE 1.09–1.14) and match 66–100% of their electricity with renewable energy. These are estimates with real uncertainty, not measurements, which is why the retired quantities are sized far above them. We convert tokens into energy, water, and carbon this way:

• Energy: per-token estimates from independent inference research (Epoch AI, 2025, and “How Hungry is AI?”, 2025, which ranked Claude among the most efficient models), scaled by model and response length.
• Water: derived from energy using a data-center water factor (~1.1 liters per kWh).
• Carbon: derived from energy using a deliberately high U.S. grid intensity (~385 g CO₂e per kWh). Actual carbon is likely lower because AWS and Google match their electricity with renewables.

District administrators can see their own organization's footprint (in absolute terms and in relatable equivalents like streaming minutes, miles driven, or water bottles) right inside Melaa, on the Environmental Footprint page in the admin dashboard.

The certificates we retire

At the platform level, IncluSend LLC purchases verified environmental certificates through Bonneville Environmental Foundation (BEF), sized well above the combined estimated footprint of every district. BEF retires each instrument in its registry on our behalf; a retired instrument can never be resold or double-counted, which is what makes the program auditable. Retirement documentation is available on request.

• Carbon: verified carbon credits, certified under Verra / Gold Standard (nature-based), permanently retired.
• Water: Water Restoration Certificates, third-party verified, which fund the restoration of real volumes of water to depleted rivers and basins.
• Renewable energy: Green-e certified renewable energy certificates (RECs) that match our estimated electricity use with certified renewable generation.

Because we buy in bulk for the whole platform, the cost is negligible and there is nothing for schools to purchase, configure, or pay. Your usage is already covered. Districts that need the underlying retirement certificates for their own sustainability reporting can request them (see below).

What this claim covers

To keep this accurate: the program covers the AI-compute footprint of the Melaa platform: the inference behind the assistant, worksheet and organizer generation, plans, and letters. It is an estimate-and-retire program, not a claim of zero impact and not a neutrality claim. We periodically compare retired quantities against cumulative estimated usage and purchase additional certificates as the platform grows.

Questions

Want the underlying methodology, coverage details, or retirement certificates for your district's sustainability reporting? Contact hello@melaa.app. Related pages: Privacy Policy, Data Sharing & Subprocessors.