How your Website should be aiding the Environment

Environmental concern was never just a marketing tactic, but many businesses have, unfortunately, treated it like one so far. All ethical businesses can do, is work on their processes, and seek to optimise their green status.

A fantastic means of achieving that is by considering the carbon footprint of our website, and what it says about your operational strategy. Using the best efficiency-focused web designers and developers, this is more than possible.

Believe it or not, the internet and its associated IT infrastructure have a compounding effect on CO2 emissions. This has driven vast companies like Adobe, media conglomerate Sky, and Google to focus on becoming completely carbon neutral in the last ten years.

What’s the damage?

When we look at the wider statistics, the picture presented to us is alarming.
The use of the internet currently:

● Consumes 2,339,400 MWh of electricity every 24 hours (on average).
● Releases 2,330,041 tons of CO2 emissions into the environment every 24 hours (on average).
● Releases 1.76g of CO2 for every web page view, with 0.2g released by search engine query.

This is why the Website carbon calculator has curated a calculator to help you assess the environmental impact of your online presence and what that could imply. Remember - these given figures are also from January 2020, three months before the Covid-19 pandemic became a major issue and pushed many of us to live, work, and socialise online.

What does this mean?

The implications of your website’s environmental impact should be considered an essential part of your green-focused strategy. Without making sure your website is carbon neutral, your business cannot honestly claim it’s taking every measure towards sustainability and environmental concern. Sustainable web design is an essential piece of that picture.

Where do we go from here?

It’s essential to do your best to source a green web company that has environmentally-friendly operations as a cornerstone of every action it promotes, and every design decision made for your website. With that, you don’t have to worry about minimising the feature set of your website, as this will be offset by best practices.

When selecting a web design company, it’s a great idea to ask how their sustainability processes will apply to their curation of your online presence. Web design and development services in the UK are becoming more and more focused on sustaining their processes via clean energy and developing attractive, competent websites that are minimal in their fluff and unnecessary hosting needs.

How is sustainable web design achieved?

Web designers are always geared to achieve a result with as little code and as little conflicting plugins and integrations as possible. Ask any website design agency in London, and they’ll list some of the following advice:

● Utilise as few images as necessary, but always make sure they are sized and compressed properly without losing out on quality. This reduces file size, and the intensity of loading.
● SVG graphics instead of PNG, JPEG and GIF can help decrease image size.
● Consider a sustainable website development company in London, one integrates sustainable energy as part of their daily functioning.
● Consider system fonts over custom fonts, this prevents web browsers from having to load a new syntax, instead of using the characters it has pre-installed.
● Web developers that focus on streamlined coding practices can help reduce the bulk of web pages, and by consequence, the emissions they produce when loading.
● Always use custom web developers with an eye for sustainability rather than one of the top website-hosting and template firms like Squarespace or WordPress. This will give you more competent control over your websites’ carbon footprint.
● Opt for dark-mode suitable web formatting where appropriate. This can help user devices reduce screen brightness, and by effect, energy consumption. Some websites even host their own dark mode toggles.

What are the benefits of sustainability-first web design?

The internet has been compared to one of the largest coal furnaces on Earth thanks to how much energy it consumes, and how integral it is to all of our lives and livelihoods.

Aside from the obvious benefits, such as lowering your firm’s carbon footprint, leading change in your industry, and tactically approving a new and better norm, green web design is a powerful marketing tool.

Investing in this development can help you truthfully suggest that you are doing all you can to refocus your brand towards becoming a sustainable model for the future. There’s almost nothing more impressive than that, when operating amid a climate emergency. Perhaps one day you will take your place among companies that are carbon neutral.

iCentric Agency will help you adapt to a carbon neutral website get in touch