FIRST STEPS FOR A GREENER WEB
WEB GREEN HOSTING
How green in your "home"? Think of your web hosting as the home for your website. When you sign into a web hosting service, you are basically renting some space on a physical server where you can store all the files and data necessary for your website to work properly. Green, sustainable or eco-friendly web hosting offers the same features as any other hosting package – with the important difference that action is also taken to reduce the environmental impact of your website. A green web hosting company will use renewable energy to power up the servers, so instead of relying on fossil fuels, they generate electricity from sources such as wind, solar and water. When building a website, please use a green Web Host or switch to one. This has a huge impact on the carbon emission. We personally love GREENGEEKS, because they are helpful and active 24/7.
Typically, websites are hosted/stored on huge servers in massive data centres, which demand a great deal of energy use. The servers run 24/7 and must operate in a cooled environment to run properly. That cooling also uses vast amounts of energy.
To generate most of this electricity, fossil fuels like coal and gas are being burned, making the internet a dirty polluting, carbon-emitting beast.
Hosting renewable energy makes a huge difference in comparison to electricity from other sources. According to current studies, standard electricity emits 475g CO2e/kWh and electricity from renewable resources emits only 33.4g CO2e/kWh.
Choosing a green web hosting that produces electricity from a sustainable method not only will reduce the general carbon emissions on this planet but will make you directly support companies with a strong mission to do good to this world.
In 2018 statistics showed that if the internet was a country it would be the 7th worst polluter in the entire world. The internet alone was responsible then for 3.7% of the CO2 emissions measured globally and will double by 2025.
Switching to a green Hosting Provider is free of charge, easy and comes with lots of perks.
If you need assistance in switching to Sustainable Web hosting, to make your website a little “greener”, or to learn more about the tools you can use, get in touch with me today.
We want to do good and we want it to do now.
REDUCE DATA SIZE
Adjust the weight of the data.
Wherever possible compress your images and videos and cut out everything you don't need.
This will create a website with small total file size and carbon output while lowering load time, fewer bounces and overall a better SEO.
As a general rule, WEBP is the most efficient format for photographs, typically with files about 30 per cent smaller than JPEG.
PNG or GIF is the most efficient format for simple images. Avoid video auto-play and big animations - if not needed - even if they are very trendy at the moment..
Another tip for reducing drastically your data is to use system fonts or only a few special fonts.
Use special fonts to attract attention ( titles and design for example), but use system font for longer captions.
See below some of the tools that I use regularly.
To reduce the size of images/ videos you can choose among the free tools:
- Optimozilla – This online image optimizer uses a smart combination of the best optimization and lossy compression algorithms to shrink JPEG, GIF and PNG images to the minimum possible size while keeping the required level of quality.
- ImageOptim – Makes images load faster Removes bloated metadata. Saves disk space & bandwidth by compressing images without losing quality.
- Tinyjpg – Compress WebP, PNG and JPEG images intelligently
- Handbrake – An open-source tool, built by volunteers, for converting video from nearly any format to a selection of modern, widely supported codecs.
MEASURING THE IMPACT
With the ability to calculate carbon emissions for our web projects, we could actually take a step further in lowering the carbon emission.
By early 2020, the median page weight was 1.97 MB and 1.77 MB for “mobile,” with an increasing 36 percent since January 2016 and mobile page weights nearly doubling in the same period.
Roughly half of this data transfer is image files, making images the single biggest source of carbon emissions on the average website.
You’ll find several carbon footprint calculators. According to the Website Carbon Calculator, the average web page they test produces approximately 0.5 grams of CO2 per pageview. That translates to 60 kg of CO2 per year for a website with 10,000 monthly page views.
Below you will find my favourite tools to calculate the carbon emission of each website. Try one of the following tools to see what is your impact.
- Digital Beacon is an awesome tool that I always like to use for website analysis. It shows CO2 emissions, page size and many useful tips.
- Ecograder is another tool that allows you to analyze websites. It also gives you detailed advice on how to make the site greener.
- Website Carbon is a simple tool that shows the website’s CO2 emissions compared to others and whether the site is hosted green
I regularly share updated content about sustainability, UX/UI green design, green web design and nature.
I would love to meet you because if you ended up being on my site means that you care for the same things I care about.
Sustainable graphic design practiceS
post recycle paper
We design with the Item life-cycle in mind.
We supports verified forestry supply chains such as the FSC when choosing paper stocks.
Local printers are our way to go in order to support the local economy and reduce emissions.
100% PCW recycled paper will be preferred.
See below the several reasons why we love this paper:
- It takes 24 good-sized trees to produce a ton of virgin fibre paper. It takes 1.1 tons of waste paper to produce a ton of 100% recycled paper.
- Paper that’s 100% post-consumer waste uses about 75% less water in production than its virgin-fibre counterpart.
- Producing recycled Kraft pulp requires a third less energy than making virgin chemical pulp. (Kraft = process for creating strong paper)
- Paper that’s carted away to the landfill decomposes and ultimately emits methane gas, which traps up to 25 times more heat than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period
natural inks
Inks and coatings that have low or no VOC emissions will be used in order to minimize air pollution. The truth is that there is no ink available today that is 100% free of non-renewable resources or chemicals. Vegetable based inks are used in our offset printing and are the eco-friendlier alternative to petroleum-based inks. Soy and vegetable products are used in the inks for their oils.
Made from the extracts of corn, walnut, coconut, linseed, canola and soy bean, the oils and extracts are often blended in order to utilise the key characteristics of each oil for best printing results.
No plastic or foil coastings will be used(lamintae, soft-touch matte..) for aesthetic purposes. Laminate will only be used when crucial for the longevity of the item. These coasting cannot be recycled and actively contribute to microplastic pollution in the ocean and chemical leaching in our landfills
DESIGNING BACKWARDS
This concept is well explained in the book: " Green Graphic Design" by Brian Dougherty.
With Designing Backwards we mean the process by which designers start from a design project's ultimate destination back to the design studio.
It is a brainstorming project that helps the designer make the right choices and consider the best green solution.
See simplified the step-by-step backward process:
- Waste – consider recyclability, compostability, consider reuse
- User – educate
- Delivery – efficient packaging
- Warehouse – consider print on demand
- Bindery – consider mechanical binding. eliminate trim waste
- Printing – Use recycle paper, design press sheets, consider digital, Low VOC printing, UV inks