Our daily work as digital professionals has a measurable impact on the environment. Learn what steps you can take to make the web more sustainable and navigate the path to a more eco-conscious internet.
Just a few months ago, the world looked on in disbelief as Hurricane Helene struck Western North Carolina, claiming over 300 lives, devastating entire towns, and submerging Asheville under feet of water and debris.
In a twist of fate, Asheville is the home of the National Centers for Environmental Information’s data center, which houses some of the country’s most important climate and climate change data. In the 1950’s, Asheville was chosen as the site of the NCEI because it was considered a “historically safe climate area.”
The NCEI was offline for weeks after the storm. One major challenge in restoring the center’s servers was the need for a robust cooling system that depended on water from Asheville’s municipal supply. With millions lacking access to clean water for drinking, cooking, hygiene, and other essential needs, finding the resources to restart the data center was justifiably not a priority.
The irony of an environmental data center being directly impacted by such a catastrophic event underscores a broader issue: storing data requires significant natural resources.
What distinguishes the data at the NCEI is its vital role in equipping us to confront the growing threat of climate change. In stark contrast, there are thousands of data centers nationwide utilizing valuable resources to store data that often goes unused — just think of all your unread emails and all the data companies collect about you for things like marketing.
What is the impact of the internet on climate change?
When considering the causes of climate change, we often focus on tangible factors like carbon emissions and industrial pollution. However, the internet — accessed through our sleek, modern devices — stands out as one of the largest contributors. As of 2020, communications technology accounted for 4% of global electricity consumption according to the Internet Health Report -- more than any country except China, India, the United States, and Russia. At its current trajectory, this figure is projected to rise to 14% by 2040.
Data storage is just one aspect of technology’s impact on climate change. Other factors, such as generative AI, electronic waste, and hardware production contribute significantly to the Internet’s environmental footprint. These impacts go directly against the W3C’s Ethical Web Principles, which state that the web should not cause harm to society and that it be an environmentally sustainable platform.
Like many issues surrounding climate change, the challenge can seem overwhelming and insurmountable. While some of these concerns are indeed larger than any one individual, as digital professionals, there are meaningful steps we can take in our daily work to help mitigate our impact.
As of 2020, communications technology used more energy than any country except China, India, the United States, and Russia.
– The Internet Health Report
Is there guidance available for creating digital products that are more environmentally sustainable?
There is. In September 2024, the W3C Sustainable Web Community released the latest draft of its community group report. This document provides guidance on designing and implementing digital products and services that prioritize people and the planet. The guidelines are best practices grounded in measurable, evidence-based research, targeting end-users, web professionals, stakeholders, tool creators, educators, and policymakers. They align with the Sustainable Web Manifesto and the GRI Standards, assisting organizations in integrating digital products and services into broader sustainability reporting initiatives.
These guidelines are based on the Sustainable Web Manifesto’s six principles of web sustainability — clean, efficient, open, honest, regenerative, and resilient — and touch on all aspects of digital product development, from design and UX to development and hosting. Similar to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the Web Sustainability Guidelines include testable success criteria. While these guidelines are not an official W3C standard like WCAG, they provide an excellent starting point for creating digital products that will have a lesser impact on the planet.
In addition to the Web Sustainability Guidelines, several tools have been developed to evaluate the environmental impact of websites and help determine what steps you can take to make your product more sustainable. Two such tools are Mightybytes’ Ecograder and Whole Grain Digital’s Website Carbon Calculator.
Note that measuring web sustainability is complex and there is not currently a globally recognized standard to measure against, so it’s important not to get caught up in the grading systems. (For example: Ecograder gave sparkbox.com a C, saying we were worse than 82% of sites evaluated — ouch. Meanwhile, the Web Carbon Calculator rated us a “B”, noting that we ranked better than 72% of websites.)
The tools are as imperfect as the sites they evaluate. But, as the Web Sustainability Guidelines emphasize “Sustainable change is measured in progress over perfection…” What is important right now is that the existing tools can be used to identify areas we can make immediate improvements to, even if those changes are small.
And it’s important not to discount the impact of even a small change. In early 2020, developer Danny van Kooten took on the task of analyzing the WordPress plugins he had created to determine the impact of their carbon emissions. He found that by removing a 20 KB JavaScript dependency from his Mailchimp for WordPress plugin, he could single-handedly reduce carbon emissions by 708 tons per year. To put this in perspective, most popular websites are significantly heavier than 20 KB. For instance, Google’s homepage — a page with basically just an input and a button — comes in at 3.22 MB. While the amount of traffic a page receives is a factor in how much emissions it will produce, it’s clear that even small improvements can have a measurable impact.
If anything, the inconsistencies in our current tools highlight just how much work is still needed. Like many things related to climate change, we are behind where we need to be. There is an urgent need in the industry for more tools, research, and education to help us figure out how much of a negative impact we are having on the environment and how to do our best with the knowledge and tools we have to improve sustainability.
Creating sustainable products has the ripple effect of resulting in products that are more accessible and inclusive as well.
Moving forward
The good news is that many of the steps we can take to reduce our work’s environmental impact are steps that we should be taking anyway. For designers and UX professionals, it means designing simpler interfaces and information architecture so users don’t have to visit as many pages to find what they need. For developers, it means taking steps to improve page performance, optimizing images, and simplifying code.
There’s new information to learn too. Most designers probably don’t know that their color choices can have a measurable impact on the amount of energy that a device uses to display those colors. These are all places where better education and more tools are needed.
Creating sustainable products has the ripple effect of resulting in products that are more accessible and inclusive as well. A simpler, more efficient webpage means a better user experience for people using assistive technologies and those in low-speed internet areas. It promotes better access for economically disadvantaged individuals using older devices and encourages those who can afford to update regularly to extend the lifespan of their current devices which, in turn, means less hardware production and less waste in our landfills.
And it’s often those dealing with poverty, low internet speeds, and the need to use older devices (if they even have one at all) who are disproportionately affected by climate change.
In a small group exercise at a conference this summer, I was matched with other digital professionals to discuss the future of our business. Speaking at the conference was Jeremy Keith, who had just challenged another speaker on the environmental impacts of AI.
During our group’s discussion, my fellow group members expressed resignation. What choice did they have but to adopt the technology when their jobs depended on it? They did, after all, need to feed their families. “But what good will that do when your house is floating away?” I asked. Silence, then head nods.
We all have choices we can make. In our current roles as web professionals, being aware of how the choices that we make are affecting the planet may be the most important step we can take.
Places to start your digital sustainability education:
Sustainable Web Design by Tom Greenwood
World Wide Waste by Gerry McGovern
