Future of Modern Sustainable Web Design

You probably are aware of terms like sustainable economy, agriculture, design etc. It means protecting environmental resources for the future generations.

But what could that mean for web design?

Well, you must know that the Internet consumes lots of energy, having a huge carbon footprint. 830 million tons of carbon dioxide are produced each year for supporting the web. 40% of this amount is imputable to web designers.

What Is the Problem?

The problem is that enormous resources are pointlessly consumed. For instance, while surfing the web, you certainly encounter lots of inactive websites. This means a waste of web space and, thus, energy. Why not give them up or sell them?

But, there is more. High-resolution images, complex visual effects, are they absolutely necessary? If they are not, why not choose an alternative?

Minimalism is the key feature of sustainable web design. It does not mean dull websites, but just transmitting your information with a minimal resource waste. Keep things simple!

You will see that this also means more success. Using large file formats slows down your website. This does not mean just pointless energy consumption, but it is also bothering for your visitors.

Another idea is to have an increased interactivity. While you are setting up a website for a certain company, give them the opportunity to edit part of the content by themselves. Nowadays, there are many user-friendly tools for non-designers. This means a quicker response to various changes. Your client could eliminate unnecessary, space-consuming files much easier by using such tools.

How Much Pollution a Website Causes?

Here are some facts:

• According to a 2008 study, 13 kWh are needed to transmit 1 GB. With a bit more than 1 pound of carbon dioxide equivalent released per kWh (average values for UK power plants), this means 13 lbs of CO₂.
• Mobile data transmission, with the new 3G and 4G technologies, is even more polluting. 77 lbs of CO₂ are released for each gigabyte.
• This means that, if one million people download a typical webpage, between 10 and 50 tons of CO₂ are released into the atmosphere.
• These numbers go up and down, depending on the local power source. Think how much any web design company, London or Birmingham-based contributes to atmospheric pollution.

Solutions

The first, obvious solution is to drop some of the unnecessary images or use smaller formats. About 63% of the space used by an average website is taken by images. Use less resource-consuming script. With plain HTML, you save 12% space. Carefully choose your content: use images instead of videos, or even better, use text whenever you can.

Carousels, sharing buttons, maps, auto-play-videos, Flash, etc. are incredibly resource consuming. Use them only if strictly needed. Use CSS sprites or icons to make images more responsive for mobile users.

Finally, have you ever thought of green hosting? If you work in web design or SEO, London, Manchester or Birmingham would probably be the first locations you would target. But what if you moved to an area with a higher renewable energy production? This does not have to mean Iceland! Scotland and other areas with high hydroelectric, nuclear or wind power production will do.

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