There's a hidden cost to every AI request: water. The data centers powering AI tools use water to cool their systems, and across millions of requests, it adds up. The environmental impact of AI is something that’s been on our minds, and a problem we decided we couldn’t ignore.
At Brisk, we want to understand that environmental footprint and do something about it. So this Earth Day, we did.
What we did
We used peer-reviewed research on AI data center water consumption and our own platform usage data to estimate our total water footprint since launching in 2023 through 2026. No cloud provider currently makes exact per-request water data available, so we worked from the best research available and deliberately built in a significant buffer to make sure our restoration would exceed our actual footprint.
Then we purchased Water Restoration Certificates® from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to restore more than twice that amount — 1.3 million gallons — to freshwater systems across North America. Each certificate represents 1,000 gallons of water restored to a critically compromised watershed. The certificates are third-party verified by the Watercourse Engineering and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, tracked, and registered.
Why this matters
The teachers who use Brisk think carefully about the tools they bring into their classrooms. Many of you are also thinking about the world your students are growing up in, and the tradeoffs that come with the technology you use every day. We take that seriously.
AI has real environmental costs alongside its real benefits. We think the companies building and using AI tools have a responsibility to understand their share of their environmental footprint and take direct action. Few have taken that step, and we wanted to show what it looks like.
We're not claiming this balances our full impact — our footprint is bigger than any single action can account for, and we're still figuring out what sustained responsibility looks like at our scale. This is a starting point.
Happy Earth Day!
