We’re taking steps towards sustainability by adopting eco-friendly web design practices.
As we’re sure that you have seen, sustainability has become a global concern, and every individual and organisation must do their part to reduce their carbon footprint and we’re included within that. According to research by The Shift Project, the internet is responsible for around 3.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, much higher than you might imagine and even higher than the aviation industry.
This means that us web designers and agencies have a crucial role to play in reducing the impact of the internet on the environment. We are of course heavily involved during the creation of websites and so it is our duty to ensure that these websites do not cause a detriment to the environment, through adopting sustainable web design practices.
Working with sustainable web design at the forefront also matters because it can improve user experience. By designing websites that are optimised for performance and use less energy, web designers can create a better experience for users and potential customers to your website. For example, websites that are fast to load and use less data are more likely to keep users engaged, which can lead to increased traffic and revenue.
Sounds like a win for everyone!
It’s all good saying all these things but actions need to be taken in order to truly make a positive impact on the environment. Here are some of the actions that we are currently taking in our sustainable web design actions:
One of the ways that we are employing sustainable web design is by adopting sustainable hosting practices. We have have chosen to work with web hosting companies that use renewable energy sources to power their servers and hosting services. These companies are verified to be sustainable hosts through The Green Hosting Directory, a directory showcasing those hosting companies who offer sustainable services.
When taking on board the hosting of new websites, we will opt to host these sites using 100% renewable energy, it’s as simple as that. For websites that we do not host, we will actively encourage the migration of the website to a more environmentally friendly website hosting provider.
This move reduces the carbon footprint of our website hosting services and ensures that our web hosting practices are sustainable.
We’re pleased to announce that we have partnered with Ecologi to further improve our sustainability.
The company operates a carbon offsetting program that allows individuals and businesses to offset their carbon emissions by supporting reforestation projects and other sustainable initiatives around the world, some of which are outlined below.
In addition, Ecologi also helps fund climate-positive projects that are designed to reduce carbon emissions and promote sustainable practices. So far, 40,000+ Ecologi members have funded 61 million+ trees and have avoided 2.5 million tonnes of CO2e, pretty good right?
You can check out our forest at ecologi.com/websdaleltd and if you sign up, we’ll get 30 extra trees in our forest!
This partnership with Ecologi also allows our us to monitor our progress and ensure that it stays on track to become a more sustainable company by watching our forest and impact grow. It is great to be able to see the specific projects that are being supported as well as being able to see the actual trees that have been planted, some of which are much closer to you than you might think!
When it comes to the emissions that a website produces, the size of each page on a website heavily impacts how much CO2 is emitted by that website. You can look at how much carbon your website emits by going to The Website Carbon Calculator.
Website pages are made up of many parts including text, images, fonts, code and other elements, all contributing to the overall weight of the website.
By optimising each website that we have under our umbrella, we will help reduce the impact of each website by making the site’s user friendly and fast to load.
We will do this by:
Everything above is great but we are not stopping there! Here are the actions that we are taking moving forward to continue providing a positive impact to the environment through our services.
At the same time, if you would like to discuss any of the above initiatives in more detail to see how you could get involved, we would love to discuss these in more detail ☺️ .
For every new client that comes on board, we will plant trees in our Ecologi forest in your name, further increasing the impact of our sustainable web design practices.
We're very excited to announce that we have been accredited as climate-positive by the Eco-Friendly Web Alliance! 🌍
The EFWA is an organisation that aims to reduce the carbon footprint of the internet by encouraging and supporting the development of sustainable websites. As a part of the accreditation, we will continue to make improvements to our sustainable web design processes through the frequent audits that the EFWA provide.
We’d love to hear what you’re hoping to achieve from your project and any questions that you may have.