It might come as a surprise, but yes, websites emit carbon emissions!
A Website’s Carbon Footprint
According to Website Carbon, the average website produces 1.76g of CO2 for every page view. So, a site with 100,000 page views per month emits 2,112 kg of CO2 per year. That’s twice the amount of CO2 as a Toyota Yaris!
How do Websites Produce Carbon Emissions?
The internet currently produces around 3.8% of global carbon emissions. This is largely due to the electricity it uses. As people continue to use more and more internet to browse through websites, the more electricity they are consuming. This may often be overlooked but it produces a large carbon footprint - something that needs to be addressed.
Mo Works Proven to be Cleaner than Others
Although concerning, there are ways in which we can reduce websites’ carbon footprint. We compiled some simple steps that we’ve taken and proven to optimise our own and clients’ websites to be more sustainable. Just by following them, we've improved our website to be 85% cleaner than most and your website can be optimised for sustainability too!
Sustainable Design Practices to Reduce Website’s Carbon Footprint
With years of experience and expertise, our experts list down some sustainable design practices devised to reduce the carbon footprint of a website:
- SEO Optimisation
A website needs to have good SEO practices. By optimising a website for search engine rankings, people can find the information they want directly. This will also amount of time wasted browsing through the web and visiting fewer pages that are not relevant - less energy consumed and less carbon footprint.
- Concise Copywriting
Similarly, by having concise and clear copywriting, people will spend less time searching for the information they need. Sometimes, businesses want people to spend time and be immersed in their website. But there’s no point having them spend too much time on your website with no value. It’s better to deliver the right information and value through clear and concise copywriting - reducing energy consumption.
- Good User Experience (UX)
Having a good user experience is very useful in the journey towards a more sustainable website. A website with good UX means that the site is easy to use. People can find and navigate through the website easily, reducing the energy they would have to waste wandering around the site to receive any value.
- Optimising Assets
Images and videos are some of the largest contributors to page weight. It means the more images and videos you use and the larger the file size is, the more energy is used. So, businesses need to consider using images and videos as minimal without disturbing the user experience. Moreover, they can also be optimised to reduce their file size by
- Load images at the correct scale instead of relying on CSS
- Compress image files without quality reduction using various available tools
- Using efficient file formats such as WebP
This way, it will reduce the page weight and consume less energy to operate - reducing the website’s carbon footprint.
- Write Clean Codes
This is quite obvious. Keeping your code clean and simple is essential for the sustainability of your website. The code should be tidy, streamlines and you should avoid duplication and write efficient queries. Plus, avoid unnecessary plugins and choose one that minimises server load. Your website will produce less carbon footprint in no time!
- Prioritising Colours That Use Less Energy
Different colours interestingly require a different amount of energy to illuminate. Darker colours require less with black requiring the least and white requiring the highest amount of energy. Other than this, you can also use more high-contrast colours so that visitors don’t need to increase their screen brightness - saving more energy that would’ve emitted more carbon emissions.
- Reduced or No Custom Fonts
Custom fonts contribute to a significant increase in page weight. A typical custom font file can be over 200kb, increasing energy use. Therefore, when designing the website, you need to carefully choose only what is needed. You can also optimise the file to be in the WOFF2 font file to get the smallest font size and subset them to only include the characters you need. This way, your website will be more sustainable and emit less carbon emissions.
It’s Time for Your Website to be Clean and Sustainable with Mo Works
At Mo Works, it is our mission to help those building a better tomorrow and enhance their brand. Our work involves digital marketing, mobile app development, social media, content marketing, UI/UX design, marketing strategy, digital assets, and brand strategy that is proven to deliver a clear, effective, clean, and sustainable website.
