October 19, 2023

Greening the Internet

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3 minutes

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Vision

Data from 2018 shows that, taken as a whole, the internet ranks among the world's most polluting entities.

Rarely is a solution entirely good or entirely bad—except for Clippy, the Microsoft Office assistant from the ’90s. Every solution has aspects that can be improved, which becomes evident when we evaluate it from different perspectives, particularly from a sustainability standpoint.

In his 2021 book Sustainable Web Design, Tom Greenwood stated:

The number of people connected to the internet is growing rapidly: Cisco predicts that two-thirds of the world’s population will be connected by 2023… At a time when we must move quickly toward a zero-carbon economy, our demand for data and web services is increasing, as are the emissions generated by the internet.

Individuals using the Internet (% of population)

The digital industry is responsible for 2-5% of global emissions, surpassing even the aviation industry. Data from 2018 shows that, taken as a whole, the internet is one of the world’s largest polluters.

We need to acknowledge this fact. We must rethink the internet! But where can you start today?

Recently, the W3C published the first version of the Web Sustainability Guidelines Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) 1.0. This document includes 93 guidelines with 232 success criteria, references, and examples to make websites and digital products more sustainable. Following these guidelines—which incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles into all decision-making processes—you can reduce the environmental impact of your digital products through a combination of user-centered design, efficient web development, renewable infrastructure, and sustainable business strategies. Additionally, applying these guidelines makes web content more accessible, usable, and performance-efficient.

The principles structuring the document were already outlined in the Sustainable Web Manifesto: Clean, Efficient, Open, Honest, Regenerative, and Resilient.

These principles inform the guidelines, which are grouped into four categories: User Experience Design, Web Development, Systems & Infrastructure, and Strategy & Management.

If the number of actions to take feels overwhelming, start by using a carbon emissions calculator for an initial assessment of your website’s footprint. There are many options available, but one project I liked is Carbon Neutral Website, which provides a detailed breakdown, including offsetting actions alongside the evaluation.

That’s all for today. In future articles, we will explore sustainability principles and strategies to reduce the internet’s environmental impact in greater depth.

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