Sustainable websites – it’s time for action

Inspired by our work with The Royal Foundation on The Earthshot Prize, which supports ground-breaking environmental projects across the globe, we’ve asked ourselves how we, in an industry that has always been at the forefront of innovation and creativity, can make a difference and create engaging websites that don’t cost the earth. This is why all of us at Pixeled Eggs have agreed to double down on our sustainability efforts and take action now.

The internet is responsible for producing around 1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year. This is double what it was 10 years ago and around 2% of the overall emissions. To put it in context, it’s equivalent to the entire aviation industry or the net emissions of carbon dioxide from changes in forestry cover due to deforestation.

Depending on the source you look at, the numbers can vary but on average a single web page on a typical website with 10,000 views per month produces 816kg of CO2 per year. That’s the same as driving your car for over 2,000 miles or charging your phone 100,000 times, that’s a single page! Put your whole website together and suddenly the numbers are pretty significant.

According to some sources, the overall emissions, including gadgets, emails etc, it is closer to 4% of global emissions. These sources have calculated that if every adult in the UK alone sent one less “thank you” email, it could save 16,433 tonnes of carbon a year – the equivalent of taking 3,334 diesel cars off the road. In fact, if the internet were a country, it would be the seventh most polluting country.

At Pixeled Eggs, we design and build smart and modern websites with 3 main considerations – Usable, Findable and Trackable. We believe action now is better than a pledge for 2030. and we’ve added another ingredient into the mix. We’re considering sustainability as part of our standard process for everything we do, creating Robust, Desirable and Sustainable websites.

We already minimise our code to ensure our pages are as lightweight as possible, use caching effectively. We switched to a green hosting solution a few years ago, and we consider sustainability throughout our design and build process, with the view to creating better-performing websites with a lower carbon footprint.

Our Creative team considers how we simplify site designs with a clear structure that would increase engagement while retaining visually impactful layouts. Our Technical team regularly explores new ways to improve the efficiency of our code and reduce server requests. Client Services and Operations work with our clients to help review and optimise websites for overall performance to ensure lighter weight and, therefore, more sustainable websites are maintained.

We want to help people understand the environmental impact of their digital presence, which is why we’ll share all that we can on our sustainability journey and I really hope you’ll join in the conversation too.

When it comes to a zero-carbon world, it is clear that we need significant action, strong legislation, and the collaboration of world leaders to bring about the profound change necessary to make a difference. However, we cannot wait for change to happen. We also need a systematic change within the design and development industry to create a more environmentally friendly web. At Pixeled Eggs, we collaborate through industry groups and the B Corp community to promote awareness and advocate a better way for the industry to operate. As clients and site administrators, you can question the choices of your designers and developers and create websites that are more accessible, perform better and are environmentally sustainable.

Read more about our work with The Earthshot Prize in our case study here.

Updated: August 2024

Photo by Alex Padurariu on Unsplash