Do Websites Have an Environmental Impact?
4 Sustainable Steps for a Greener Digital Future
In our digital age, websites have become an integral part of our lives. While websites may appear ethereal, their carbon footprint is quite real. As sustainability takes center stage in our collective consciousness, it becomes imperative to extend our eco-friendly practices beyond the physical realm and embrace sustainable principles in the digital landscape.
The digital landscape consumes vast amounts of energy, primarily through data centers and the power required to operate users’ devices. Each time a single web page loads , it emits 20 milligrams of CO2 per second. For more complex sites, this can be as much as 300 milligrams and scrolling through your Instagram feed emits 1.5g of Carbon.
Here are 4 ways to reduce your digital carbon footprint:
Choose a Green Web Host
Opting for green hosting providers that rely on renewable energy sources for their servers. Certifications or carbon-neutral badges can indicate a provider’s commitment to transparency and accountability. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is one such example, as it matches 100% of its energy consumption with renewable energy and maintains carbon neutrality. The Green Web Foundation offers a useful tool to verify if your web host operates sustainably.
Optimizing Images and Videos
Optimizing images and utilizing modern formats like WebP can substantially reduce file sizes without compromising visual quality. By reducing the data size of images and videos, websites require less bandwidth to load, resulting in lower energy consumption and carbon emissions. Additionally, enabling lazy loading, where images are loaded as the user scrolls, improves loading times and reduces carbon emissions.
Deleting Unwanted Content
Removing unnecessary media, pages, posts, and plugins from your website is essential for minimizing resource consumption. Unutilized content takes up space on servers, leading to increased energy usage. Regularly reviewing and deleting irrelevant or redundant elements from your website ensures a clean backend and reduces environmental impact.
Implementing Cleaner Code
Compressing CSS and JavaScript files and employing minification techniques optimize website performance, resulting in faster load times and reduced bandwidth requirements. Additionally, leveraging content delivery networks (CDNs) ensures that data travels shorter distances, minimizing latency and reducing energy consumption.
Sustainable web development requires a collaborative effort from web developers, designers, businesses, and website owners. These seemingly small actions can collectively make an impact on reducing carbon emissions for a cleaner digital future.
About Brave People
We help our client partners look ahead to what doesn’t yet exist by bringing their digital products to life and driving shared value for everyone involved. Through our tailored engagement models, growing organizations have the power to scale their design and technology support up or down based on short and long-term business needs.
