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 measure the footprint of every AI request, and we offset 100% of it with independently verified credits, at no cost to your school or district.

How we measure 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. 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 conservative U.S. grid intensity (~385 g CO₂e per kWh), so our offsets never under-cover. 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.

How we offset it

At the platform level, IncluSend LLC (Melaa's operator) purchases and retires verified credits through Bonneville Environmental Foundation to cover the combined measured footprint of every district, with a comfortable safety margin. "Retiring" a credit permanently removes it from its registry in our name so it can never be resold or double-counted, which is what makes the claim auditable.

• Carbon: offsets certified under Verra / Gold Standard (nature-based), permanently retired through a registry-backed provider.
• Water: Water Restoration Certificates, third-party verified & registered (Bonneville Environmental Foundation), which return real volumes of water to depleted rivers and basins.
• Renewable energy: Green-e® certified renewable energy certificates (RECs) that match our electricity use with new 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: our offsets cover the AI-compute footprint of the Melaa platform: the inference behind the assistant, worksheet and organizer generation, plans, and letters. It is a measured-and-retired offset, not a claim of zero impact. We reconcile our retired credits against actual usage at the end of each coverage period to confirm we've covered 100% of it.

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.