If it was a country, the internet would be the fourth biggest greenhouse gas emitter on the planet, and a major consumer of water for cooling. In 2018, Google used 15 billion tonnes of drinking water for cooling its data centres. There are around 200 million active websites, with some 6.9 million tonnes of carbon/month emitted by the action of people looking at these sites. Every time we look at a webpage, it’s contributing another 0.7-1.1 gms to CO2 emissions.
Changes are happening. Google is looking at using grey water for cooling; a company called Deep Green sites new data centres next to places that can use the heat generated, reducing carbon emissions by 60%.
What can we do? Obviously, cutting down unnecessary scrolling through pages to pass the time of day will help, but so will better web design for those sites that are NOT trying to keep you clicking through in order to show you more adverts! We’ve all been thoroughly annoyed by websites that make you click through several unnecessary pages to get to the useful bits, or that lead you up a dead alley where the only way back is to start again from the beginning. Sites that do this are badly designed and put off the potential customer, whilst creating an unnecessary environmental burden.
There are best practice solutions, such as checking the flow, choosing different fonts, compressing pictures or changing screen colours. Could you ask the people who run your work website whether they have looked at optimisation and suggest that this would be an excellent step forward for a greener workplace with higher customer satisfaction. www.websitecarbon.com is one good place to get starting ideas.
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