Among other things, sustainability is about efficient use of energy and energy generated in an environmentally friendly way. The internet also consumes energy, a lot of it.
“If the internet were a country, it would be the fourth largest polluter”
Freitag et al in a 2021 study
Since the internet has become an integral part of our society, it is necessary to work on digital sustainability.
Reduce website emissions
An important step in making the internet more sustainable is to reduce emissions from websites. This includes ensuring that websites do not contain unnecessary ballast and that there is as little data traffic as possible when you visit a website.
A website that handles data optimally and in a lean way consumes less energy. An additional advantage of this is that the loading time of a web page is drastically reduced, which has a positive effect on user experience and search engine optimisation (SEO).
Generate energy sustainably
Energy is always needed to host and present a website to users. This energy must then be generated using fossil-free and renewable energy, such as energy from wind, sun and water.
Fortunately, there are more and more hosting providers which generate their energy in a sustainable, green way. If your website is hosted with such a hosting provider, you ensure that no dirty, grey energy is used for your website.
These measures help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
How I can help you
A lot of information about sustainable web design is already available online. There are also applications available that provide insight into website emissions. If this is insufficient for you to take concrete action, I will be happy to help you. For example, in the following ways.
Sustainability audit
Using available online applications and the Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG), I make an overview of the current emissions of a few representative pages of your website.
For you, this means that you do not have to do this for each page yourself and that you get concrete action points that you can implement immediately to make your website more sustainable.
Implementation and optimisation
Do you lack the knowledge or capacity to implement the action points from the audit? Then I can do that for you. Together, we make an action plan, indicating who carries out which actions and where responsibilities lie. I can even carry out some of these actions for you.
This can be useful for you if, for example, you are in a website redesign or restructuring. As an experienced content manager, I can quickly see where you can optimise the website.
What you can do right now
Contact me to find out how I can help you with your digital sustainability journey.
Read my latest posts about digital sustainability.