The Carbon Impact of Websites
Do you know the carbon footprint of your web browsing? 😬
Back At It
There’s something I recently learned about with regard to my carbon impact and footprint. Something I use everyday, as do virtually every other connected person on this planet — the world wide web.
I am not naive enough to believe that the power of the internet doesn’t carry a footprint, but I hadn’t realized that there is a significant amount of carbon waste and CO2 impact that comes from individual webpages, and that they can be measured.
A company called Wholegrain Digital out of London has created a tool that measures carbon footprint of webpages. This tool, Website Carbon, is pretty enlightening.
There is a big wave of UX and UI designers who think about how webpages provide content to users everyday. And in my experience using web builders, I’ve learned a fair amount about the process, but have so much more I can learn.
So, here’s where I lay my own mistakes at the mercy of this audience. My personal website is built on WordPress. I use a theme that’s called Divi, and I’ve changed it into a child theme, then customized a bit from there. There are a lot of plugins that I use to do the things I need. My website is carbon dirty.
I’ve published websites on WordPress for over a decade. I have hundreds of posts written on the platform, and I’m scared to leave it simply for the historical prospect.
But, the process of using that platform and plugins — along with known heavy lifter Divi — makes my website a terrible product of clean web traffic. My hosting is shared, and thus slower.
(If you want to learn more about the efforts of green software engineering, this post from Microsoft is as detailed as is it is great.)
My website is a problem. I don’t generate a lot of traffic, but each time I do, I generate carbon impact.
So, what will I do?
A site rebuild has been a long time coming, particularly as I focus on new areas for my freelance work, especially copywriting and copyediting.
I will work on web energy efficiency. Here’s a list of things that can improve web design and decrease carbon waste.
I will look into the viability of changing my hosting provider to a “Green Host.”
And finally, overall, this is what my goal will be (from the Microsoft post I mentioned earlier).
Websites Are Heavy
My web problems are not unique.
- CNN.com: 95% dirtier.
- NYTimes.com: 89% dirtier.
There are some good ones too.
- Choosing Eco on Substack: 66% cleaner (woohoo!).
- Apple.com: 58% cleaner.
- WhiteHouse.gov: 58% cleaner.
The first step to making strides to better planet stewardship is learning, and then acknowledging, that there is a problem.
So, this is my statement today: I will do better. And when I do improve, I’ll report back in a future issue.
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Thank you for reading and thank you for your continued support and interest in doing good things for our planet!
