Join Sustainable Websites to Sustainable Brands
Sustainable design is the approach to creating products and services that have considered the environmental, social, and economic impacts from the initial phase through to the end of life. EcoDesign is a core tool in the matrix of approaches, services, and practices that enables the Circular Economy to function.
What is a sustainable website?
Creating a sustainable website is about more than just making something that looks good and functions well. It's about considering the bigger picture, taking into account the well-being of people, our planet, and the financial success of the website. A truly sustainable website is a thoughtful and responsible endeavor that ensures it operates in harmony with the world around it.
Why should websites be sustainable?
A recent report by The Shift Project revealed that in 2018, the internet and digital technology were responsible for 3.7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a figure comparable to the aviation industry. Despite its significant environmental impact, the internet often goes unnoticed while other sources of pollution are heavily scrutinized.
As digital technology continues to expand rapidly, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, the report predicts that this percentage will more than double by 2025. This underscores the urgent need for more sustainable solutions in the digital realm.
Sustainable web design and development are not just a trend but a responsibility to create a more responsible and eco-friendly digital future.
80% of the environmental consequences of products are anchored in the design stages. The impact on product design in the final product development phase and at the design decision stage are involuntarily determined and thus embedded in the product. It’s uncomfortable, and product developers have a responsibility to make responsible decisions when preparing for prototyping a product.
What does sustainable design mean?
Sustainable web design refers to creating websites that are environmentally friendly, socially responsible, and economically viable. It involves designing and developing websites with minimal environmental impact while considering the well-being of users, communities, and the planet. Here are some key principles of sustainable web design:
The Circular Economy
Within the last couple of years, a new study shows that raw materials and finished products are discarded by-products that are produced from nature, turned into useful materials, and goods purchased and immediately disposed of. In recent years there has been an interesting framework around shifting from linear to circular systems called the circular economy framework.
Sustainable Web Manifesto
The Sustainable Web Manifesto is a call to action for businesses and individuals to prioritize sustainability in their online activities. It urges us to take responsibility for the environmental impact of our digital presence and make conscious efforts to reduce negative effects.
In this manifesto, sustainability is at the forefront, emphasizing the need to minimize waste and support environmentally friendly practices. It challenges us to rethink how we design, develop, and maintain websites, with a focus on energy efficiency, resource conservation, and responsible consumption.
By adopting the principles outlined in the Sustainable Web Manifesto, we can make a big difference in reducing carbon emissions and minimizing our ecological footprint. It serves as a guide for businesses and individuals alike to build a more green energy sustainable future for the web while still meeting our technological needs. Let’s embrace this manifesto wholeheartedly and work towards a greener online world.
The Sustainable Web Manifesto is a pledge to put the environment and people before profits. And also seeks to lessen our environmental impact.
“Climate change is expected to cause 250,000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050. View Source How do we do it? Sustainable web design is an approach to designing web services and sustainable websites that put people and the planet first. It delivers digital products and services that respect the principles of the Sustainable Web Manifesto, written by Tom Greenwood: clean, green energy efficient, open, honest, regenerative, and resilient. Read the Manifesto Discover sustainable web design practices and select a category to learn more about delivering sustainable web design projects.”
How do you know if a website is sustainable?
If you own an IP from the Greenweb Foundation, this means your site will run entirely on renewable energy resources. Take note that web hosting services that don’t check green hosting, won’t guarantee your sites’ use of renewable power sources. So check for the carbon footprint of your hosting solution.
How do you keep a website sustainable?
Optimize the image size to reduce file size. Use the video strategically. Install lazyload to the images or media. Install a web cache. Delete anything you don’t want. Improve Site Navigation to simplify searching. Use an environmentally friendly website.
EcoDesign Strategies
The Sustainable Design Strategies were first developed by Victor Papanek in the 1970s and have a long history of involvement from various individuals and approaches. The ‘designed by x’ sustainability strategy is carefully designed to reflect the circular economy and how it is related to closing the loop and dramatically changing economic and business models.
Sustainable design principles as outlined by a Sustainable Web Design process make eco friendly web design and create better use of renewable energy and material resources. Energy efficiency and monitoring greenhouse gas.
How to measure the GHG emissions of your website
Sustainability is not easily measured or compared in real life. But the Website Carbon Calculator is a helpful tool.
Calculate To Determine Emissions from the Website Carbon Calculator.
If you are a Tik-Tok influencer try this website, Juiced Media. Their website is powered 100% by renewable energy.
A good example of the sustainable design of a sustainable website is Good Energy.
Product Service Systems (PSS) Models
In a nutshell, circular economy has moved from a single-use product into an integrated product, in a beautifully integrated closed-loop framework that has this approach. Think of alternative purchases like readily available items that are included in a company’s support system or service, enabling reuse. Instead of selling directly a product, a company can lease the product throughout its entire product lifecycle allowing it the ability to quickly fit back into a specially developed recycling system.
Creating energy-efficient websites
Web page sizes today are 2088.5kb. We’re also generating a carbon footprint that we can reduce through data transfer. There are several important areas where we can easily make small changes that only require some tweaking to our workflow. To create sustainable, energy-efficient websites, that contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, follow these best practices:
How to create and manage a sustainable website, that uses renewable energy and minimizes electricity usage?
Use lazy load for images and media
Lazy loading means that a file is loaded in the exact order the image is needed. All of the more data in the above fold loads immediately if at load time a user lands on a website. So if an individual does not scroll the entire screen to the bottom, the image will not load automatically. It saves energy consumption & speeds up load time for website loading, which makes SEO much better.
Optimize images to reduce the file size
The high-resolution images look great on the site and significantly burden loading times. It seems like reducing image size would be a very effective way of reducing workload. Make sure your image is a good picture. Does it serve any purpose? Please use photos that are absolutely needed, and reduce resolutions and photos as much as possible. Alternatively, you can use the software TinyPNG/wpsmush.com to upload them to your site.
Impact Management Platform
The Impact Management Platform is a very low-carbon website that consumes no power consumption and just 0.19g of carbon per site. It also provides incredibly useful features that ensure access and make energy efficient everywhere. This includes an efficient search system and the ability for customizable favorites. In addition, it offers an interactive wheel and an interactive menu. Websites with a fast loading rate are fast. Page loading is just 1.3 seconds.
Set up web caching
Caching means downloading shared page content, including images or Javascript, to be stored closer to the user’s computer or internet. When a browser visits a site, it can retrieve the stored information by using its cache instead of requesting data from the website. This enhances site performance while minimizing data storage.
Hub & spoke content plan
Use content clusters and internal linking
This is optimizing for search. Think SEO. It is not something I would necessarily think helps your website's carbon footprint. However, using a good website structure with pillar pages and then related content linked to/from the pillar page is a good practice for lowering your carbon footprint. A well-structured website will keep the user on the website because it was planned in a way to anticipates user intent and secondary user questions. This is also called secondary search intent.
You can also think of this as the Hub & Spoke method. By organizing incoming content from users into clusters, such as the introduction hub, linked to deeper spoke articles, you can meet the secondary search needs of users.
In addition to providing immediate service to a user, the secondary search intent will address the questions the user has encountered during his research. Content clusters and internal linking may help users fulfill second searches.
This is a standard SEO practice to link internally to your website pages. Sustainable websites do this as it helps with their website’s environmental impact. It will minimize waste and serve functional needs for environmental impacts too.
Don’t stop at carbon-neutrality
To make your site carbon-free, you can host it with an energy-saving provider, reduce its power use, and offset its carbon emissions with renewable energy credits. This generally involves investing in carbon offsets from businesses that aim to reduce emissions elsewhere as well as achieve other positive outcomes. Creating a carbon-neutral website can help you reach the most targeted audience. However, it is important to also consider the sustainability of your server and its performance in order to truly have a green website.
Designers must go beyond achieving carbon neutrality and push for sustainability and efficiency in all aspects of their work. It is not enough to simply offset emissions; the entire design process should be optimized to minimize environmental impact.
By incorporating sustainable materials, considering lifecycle assessments, and designing for durability, function, and longevity, designers can create products that have a reduced environmental footprint. Additionally, efficiency should be a key consideration, whether it’s in manufacturing processes or energy usage.
What can Designers Do?
Designers have the power to influence consumer behavior through their creations. By prioritizing sustainability and efficiency, they can inspire others to make more conscious choices. Designers must take responsibility for the long-term impact of their designs on the planet and strive for sustainable solutions at every stage of the design and development process.
By striving to reduce negative impacts in addition to achieving carbon neutrality, we can create and achieve a more comprehensive and holistic approach towards sustainability. It requires us to rethink our processes, products, and practices with a commitment to minimizing harm and maximizing positive outcomes.
Let’s not settle for carbon neutrality alone; let’s challenge ourselves to do better by actively seeking ways to reduce our negative environmental and social footprints. Together, we can create a more sustainable energy future for years to come.