🤯 "The internet accounts for 3.7% of global carbon emissions, exceeding aviation's 2.5%.”
This stat blew my mind!
✈️ The internet pollutes the planet more than planes!
🌍 It’s probably not that surprising when you take a step back and consider how much we use the internet but that’s the point, we all know the impact transport has on pollution but we don’t ever discuss how browsing the web has an impact. Now take a look at your weekly screen time usage across all devices and it’s actually quite easy to see how energy consumption soon adds up!
So what contributes to a websites emissions?
🖥️ The device you’re loading the website on
🛜 The network infrastructure being used ( broadband, routers etc )
🏢 The data centre hosting the website
All of these items have an energy consumption when you load a website. The larger the page, the longer it takes to load, the more energy consumed.
*** That’s the equation in its simplest form. ***
What factors contribute to page load speeds?
🏞️ Number and size of images
🎥 Number and size of videos
📚 Amount of text
💬 Use of 3rd party resources such as live chat plugins
⭐️ Optimisation techniques in use
Before I talk about what you can do, and how you can test your website let’s quickly talk about why you should care.
🌲The obvious - you’re helping do your bit to reduce that 3.7% figure
🌲Google likes it! - A fast loading website will rank higher than a slow ranking equivalent ( all other factors being equal )
🌲User experience - A faster loading website is less likely to lead to someone exiting your website
🌲 Mobile Experience - It’s higher likely that over 50% of your website visitors are using a mobile so make it responsive to smaller screens
What can you do to reduce the impact of your website?
♻️ Reduce the number of resources - images, files, videos, fonts. This doesn’t mean just have a white background and black text in Arial font, don’t compromise on your brand but make sure every item has relevance.
♻️ Optimise the resources. Reduce the size of the videos and images, adjust the size for different devices so smaller images will load on mobile, for example.
♻️ Set up lazy loading so images only load if someone scrolls to that point in the page
♻️ Use a green friendly hosting company so the data centre is powered using green energy
♻️ Use a CDN - Ask your developer about this one, particularly if your audience is international.
➡️ The good news is that most of this is simple and quick to implement - just speak to your developer or drop us a message to discuss.
👣 If you want to test the carbon footprint of your website just enter the URL into this website and they’ll calculate it all for you - https://www.websitecarbon.com/
If you want to offset your website footprint don’t forget we are planting a tree for every new website we host in 2025, which for most websites will cover a years footprint! We can also discuss how to implement the optimisation techniques for your website!