Internet Carbon Emissions Australia

How Much Waste Does The Global Web Produce?

As of 2020, roughly 54% of the planet population registered and use internet. Although the web is one of the greatest cloud libraries ever built, it has its trade-offs. Sustainability becomes increasingly important when web is no longer a foundation but instead a scaffold to future projects.

According the Carbon Footprint Of The Internet, it appears that Aussies lead the way when it comes to browsing. As much as 75 kWh per capita is used up to browse the web in 2008. We can only imagine what it is like today. Either way, the amount of information in any quantity is good, but we do need to consider how we use the network and the infrastructure.

Green hosting

Most hosting companies now understand the environmental impact of using nonrenewable energy sources and have gone green with their energy consumption to save the environment.

We highly encourage the use of green hosting companies that are fully committed to reducing the web greenhouse gas emissions. Using local hosting providers improves loading speeds and in turn costs less. For example we use this wholesale hosting provder for a wide range of projects. 

How will a sustainable website benefit a customer?

Advantages of a sustainably designed website to a customer include;

- Improved recognition by search engines

- Faster loading sites which connect users

- Highly responsive site with clear and quick navigation

- Mobile-friendly website

Website sustainability tools to get started with

Some tools can help with getting a site sustainably designed. Examples:

Ecograder: helps to determine the overall performance of a site, user experience, SEO ranking, and whether the site is using renewable energy.

WebsiteCarbon: estimates how much greenhouse gas a site emits.

Green Web Foundation: from Green Web Foundation can help determine whether a hosting company is using green energy or not.

12 Tips to future-proofing web design

1. Focus on responsive web design and development.

2. Get your website navigation right.

3. A future-proof website is searchable and easily accessible too.

4. Get your technical SEO right.

5. Make plans for future functionality that will be needed by the target audience.

6. Focus on improved and sustainable UX.

7. Optimise images to reduce file size.

8. Be strategic with videos.

9. Use lazy load for images and media.

10. Set up web caching.

11. Delete what you don't need.

12. Monitor website trends but always be unique with approaches taken.

Conclusion

Sustainability in web design and development should be the main focus of every web designer today because of its great importance. A sustainable web design will make the planet much safer by reducing the carbon dioxide emissions of the web, and greatly improve user experience by making web designs more efficient and resilient ensuring that web consumers keep getting values they intend to get in the long run.