You don’t have to be a frequent flyer to leave a so-called ecological footprint. Carbon dioxide emissions pollute the air, which aggravates climate change, and they happen through the internet. Video streaming (Netflix, Zoom), crypto mining (Bitcoin), and gaming only represent the tip of the iceberg. Badly coded websites contribute to the destruction of the environment.
Sustainable web development can help to stop the destruction. Minimalism, optimization, and choosing eco-friendly service providers are potential measures. But you don't need to delete every image or video. File size optimization, caching, and so-called “lazy loading” are strategies to optimize website loading speed and ecological efficiency to improve customer experience and prevent wasting useless energy. Those measures can even apply to existing websites.
But how do we know if we need to take action?
Inspecting and Measuring the Ecological Impact of a Website
We have already been able to estimate website loading times (web speed) and accessibility (a11y). The online tool Website Carbon Calculator and Ecograder try to measure websites’ eco-friendliness. Both tools are free to use and provided by non-profit organizations.
Even Google has started to include ecologically relevant aspects in its well-known Lighthouse / PageSpeed website audit at pagespeed.web.dev.
How to reduce a digital carbon footprint?
So, how can you improve your website? If you use a content management system like WordPress, Wix, WebFlow etc., check your default system settings and make sure that images will be optimized after uploading, which means the server will shrink your files without visible quality loss and try to save them in more modern and thus more efficient storage formats.
Look for data saving, “minification” and caching options and try if you can activate them. Choose your data. Video is infamous for wasting bandwidth! Videos should not auto-play for various reasons, including ecology and accessibility. Maybe you don't need to embed videos at all?
Go for green energy! Website hosting providers often include options to use renewable energy (no fossil fuels) if possible. If you don't see an option, ask them proactively!
You can also hire a web developer (like me) to check and improve your existing website. And if you are about to start a new web project, make ecology one of your priorities and tell your designers and developers so that they can act accordingly.
https://www.ingo-steinke.com/services/accessible-climate-website-optimization.html
