Before we move on to practical tips, DEN asks two important questions to green IT expert Julia Krauwer from ABN Amro. What causes pollution, and why should we do something about it?
Where does this pollution come from?
The internet exists entirely in the cloud. To make this cloud available to everyone at all times, data centers around the world consume a tremendous amount of electricity. Additionally, the construction of this equipment also uses scarce resources that are hardly recycled (or can be). In short: everything stored on the internet contributes to CO2 emissions.
An example: if a website emits 0.5 grams of CO2 per page view and attracts 10,000 visitors per month, it quickly emits 60 kilograms of CO2 if these visitors view multiple pages. That equals 270 kilometers of driving. The sustainability of your website can reduce this impact.
Why is awareness so important?
From watching a movie on Netflix to listening to an album on Spotify, we unconsciously use the cloud and therefore these data centers. The internet is now bigger than ever and will only continue to grow. New digital services are launched on the internet daily.
Think, for example, of ChatGPT, which gained millions of users in no time. To ensure their website can handle the large number of visitors, they must activate more servers. And to keep these servers running, more data centers are needed.
Did you know that data centers are more sustainable than individual storage? Data centers often use green energy and residual heat. They source their energy from solar, wind, and hydropower. This reduces CO2 emissions compared to, for example, individual data storage locations.
How do I create a sustainable website?
To find out how to make your website more sustainable, you first need to know the current state of your ecological footprint. How sustainable is your website now? With a CO2 calculator, you can calculate how your website scores on sustainability compared to other tested sites. We Are Warming Up also used this as a starting point.
According to the Website Carbon Calculator, den.nl is 75% cleaner than tested pages. Are you doing even better?
92% dirtier than average
As an organization that connects art and climate, We Are Warming Up found it important to measure their own digital footprint. When the CO2 calculator revealed that they were 92% dirtier than the average website, they knew they had to act.
Unfortunately, the CO2 calculator does not indicate where the largest consumption on your website occurs. Therefore, We Are Warming Up conducted their own analysis of their website. This analysis showed that stored data and visual materials, such as videos and photos, accounted for the largest consumption. This is true for many other websites as well and can actually be improved quite easily!
Small changes, big impact
In the cultural sector, visual material is an important part of the website. Taking your visual material offline is therefore not an option. But you can make it more sustainable. Here’s what We Are Warming Up did:
Cleaning up
We Are Warming Up removed all unnecessary data from their network. This includes completely deleting web pages that are not online, cleaning up mailboxes, and removing unused images from the cloud.
Reduce your data usage
Each image has a specific memory size, called megabytes. By reducing the number of megabytes (MB) per image, you ensure that it takes up less space in the cloud. We Are Warming Up chose to only place images with a maximum size of 1 MB on their website. They even go a step further: visitors can choose to view images blurred to further reduce their footprint.
Choose green hosting
For sustainable website hosting, it is advisable to select a web host that uses renewable energy sources to power their servers and data centers. This way, you can significantly reduce the carbon footprint of your website hosting. Additionally, you can consider web hosts with energy-efficient cooling techniques and CO2 compensation programs.
The end result? Thanks to the adjustments, We Are Warming Up's website is now 87% cleaner than the average website. A very impressive result! If you want more inspiration, take a look at We Are Warming Up and discover what else is possible to make your website more sustainable.
Getting started with your website? Also think about digital accessibility.
In addition to sustainability, digital accessibility is also an important theme when working on your website. Are your pages high-contrast enough? Is the font readable? Do images contain alt text? What language do I use? These are questions to ask when making your website digitally accessible. Did you know that at least 2 million people in the Netherlands need this?
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