Valentina Karellas, a London-based knitwear designer, was shocked to learn that every visit to her website’s homepage generates up to 9.89g of carbon emissions, nearly ten times the 1g target recommended by the Eco-Friendly Web Alliance. Karellas, determined to run a sustainable business, sources surplus yarns and uses hand-powered knitting machines to make everything to order. Her website is both an online portfolio and a shopfront, with large, beautiful images used to showcase her designs. However, she was unaware of the environmental impact of her website when it was built.
Several tools are available now that expose a website’s carbon footprint, including the Website Carbon Calculator and Ecograder, which estimate a home page’s carbon emissions. To reduce a website’s carbon footprint, switching to hosting based on renewable energy is essential. The Green Web Foundation has a tool for looking up web hosts and their green credentials.
Reducing the amount of data stored and sent across the network can also help reduce a website’s carbon footprint. Web developers must address the challenge of the average web page size increasing from 468KB in 2010 to more than 2,000KB today. Faster internet connections have allowed web developers to use large images and background videos, increasing the size of web pages. Tom Greenwood, managing director of Wholegrain Digital, which builds low-carbon websites, recommends optimising images to reduce their file size while maintaining quality. The modern WebP format is more efficient than the older JPEG format.
Product design studio Quarterre worked with agency Future Selves to cut its website carbon emissions by 96%. They went from nearly 7g of carbon to 0.3g per homepage visit. To achieve this, they rebuilt the website with a few simple pages. Instead of using large hero images, the new site uses smaller images arranged to create a composite design. Coloured stripes define the site’s identity, created with text instructions that reduce the need for bulky image files. Animation and interaction effects were added using HTML and CSS, two fundamental web languages, eliminating the need to download large JavaScript files often used to do this on other sites.
In addition to reducing file sizes, streamlining the user journey through the site can help reduce a website’s carbon footprint. Tim Frick, the founder of Mightybytes, recommends avoiding elements that cause users to spend more time interacting with the page. Quarterre’s Clive Hartley notes that a more than 90% reduction in energy consumption is significant and would have people partying in the streets.
Website owners can also ask themselves whether any visits can be avoided altogether. This is a challenging task for any business, but it will ultimately contribute to reducing the carbon footprint of a website. While Karellas was initially concerned about compromising the quality of her website, she soon realised that any changes she made were unlikely to affect her business.
Reducing a website’s carbon footprint is essential for businesses promoting sustainability. Tools are available to help measure a website’s carbon emissions, and web developers can make changes to the design and content of a site to reduce its carbon footprint. Greenwood notes, “It’s easy to take the first steps, and any tweaks are unlikely to affect a business.” Businesses can reduce their environmental impact and contribute to a sustainable future by making small changes to their websites.
