Sustainable Web Design: How to Reduce Your Site’s Carbon Footprint

30 September 2022

When the Internet first became a “thing,” it was hailed as a way of being more green. The web would cut down on the amount of paper, which meant chopping down fewer trees. Predictions were also made that business travel and product shipping would also be cut down. That’s how the Internet was supposed to work.

However, as you can see, these predictions really didn’t come true. The Internet has grown immensely, as has its own footprint. According to Websitecarbon.com, the average website produces about 211 kg of CO2 per year, while watching a video can put out about 0.2 g of CO2/second! One email can create about 50 g of CO2. Now combine this with 4.66 billion active Internet users in the world, and you can see the Internet isn’t as green as anyone thought.

But wait, it’s not all doom and gloom! When it comes to website design, there are some steps you can take to reduce your site’s carbon footprint.

1) Reduce the Amount of Energy Used

The Internet is powered by electricity; studies have shown the Internet produces as much CO2 as a major country! The carbon produced comes from the devices we use and the servers that host our websites.

Consider the fact that servers tend to heat up when used, which causes them to slow down. They are extremely vulnerable and use a lot of energy to stay cool to keep working. This is why so many IT companies put their servers in the sea.

However, you can use the following steps to reduce the amount of energy your website uses:

Make your site load faster: when your site uses less data, servers don’t have to work as hard to present that data to site visitors. So, ensure your site is loading fast. You’ll not only pare down the site’s carbon footprint, but you’ll gain some rank in the search engines, too! (Google loves fast-loading sites).

Reduce resources used: reducing the number of files that are requested by the server each time a page of your site is requested can help reduce your site’s carbon footprint. Reducing the number of images, videos and using fewer widgets can all help ensure your site loads faster and requires fewer resources.

Optimise images: this is a tip you often hear in regard to speeding up websites; however, it also applies to making your site more sustainable. Optimising images means less data is required to load website pages. You can use a site such as TinyPNG to reduce the size of images (PNGs & JPGs).

Use lazy loading images: this is a funny term, but the result is one that lower’s your website’s carbon footprint. Lazy loading images means that images at the top of the page always load, while images farther down the page load only when a user scrolls down to them. On the other hand, if a user doesn’t scroll down, then the images don’t load. This can save some CO2s for your site!

Use sustainable hosting: another way to reduce the amount of energy used for your site is to choose a sustainable hosting company. These are companies that obtain their electricity from green sources such as solar and wind power.

2) Design for Older Devices

Most of us are always on the lookout for the latest tech and gadgets. What’s not to like when a new iPhone comes out? Sure, we want to buy it! That new iPhone usually has some snazzy specs and looks great. But what about our old devices that still work? They’re usually left in a drawer to gather dust or shipped out in the garbage or to a recycler.

What we don’t realise is that our old gadgets can have a hard impact on the environment. Yet, we always rush for the newest thing when it comes out.

What would happen if we designed the web to include older devices? Many people choose to keep using their older tech to save money and save the environment at the same time. It’s not hard to create sites and services that can work on these older devices.

All that’s needed is technology such as CSS Grid, which works to reduce markup size and speed sites up. This tech has been around for about four years and works well with older devices. If you can encourage your site visitors to use their older tech for even another six months, that means the carbon “cost” of the device is reduced by about 20%.

3) Encourage Site Visitors to Make Better Choices

More people (including your site visitors) are concerned about making better choices when it comes to the environment. When it comes right down to it, most people want to decrease their carbon footprint. And you can help them do it!

Improve site navigation: making your content easier for site visitors to find can help make the site more sustainable. This can mean ensuring your site navigation is logical, easy to find, easy to use, and more. Improving your site’s navigation means fewer page loads, which means less power is needed to serve up information.

Don’t remove the shipping rate: be sure to keep the shipping information available to customers. Many sites offer free shipping to encourage customers to buy more. That’s great; however, if the shipping costs are not displayed, it’s easy for site users to think there’s no shipping involved. They know their items are being shipped; however, the issue is they don’t stop to think about the carbon output to deliver their items. It’s completely acceptable to take on the shipping costs yourself; however, be sure to add the shipping costs and then deduct them as a discount. The buyer will see there’s still an environmental cost to their purchase.

Summing It Up

Sustainable website design isn’t hard, and it won’t affect your site in a negative way. Just the opposite is true! By making your site more sustainable, your business will thrive. Sites that are easier to use and faster not only use less energy, but they’re also optimised for SEO and ranking higher in the search engines.

What’s more, you’re helping your customers make better choices when it comes to keeping their carbon footprint smaller too.

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