How digital technologies can reduce the global carbon footprint — Part 5

Eco-designing web services

5 min readMay 7, 2022

Introduction

The ecological footprint of the web is substantial. It is estimated that if the Internet were a country, it would be the seventh-largest energy consumer[1]. Ecological web design aims to make the web less resource-intensive. This is even more important as technological progress has resulted in an impressive increase in the weight of web pages. In twenty years, the importance of web pages has multiplied by 115 from 1995 to 2015, according to Frédéric Bordage of the GreenIT Collective[2]. The average web page produces 1.76 grams of CO2 per page view. A website with 10,000 monthly page views is 211 kg CO2 per year[3], equivalent to driving 1036km[4]. By embracing sustainability in web services, digital professionals can create a good web for users and the planet.

Web eco-design: Principles

Designing web services with an ecological and sustainable approach means creating digital products and services that respect the principles of the Sustainable Web Manifesto[5]:

Clean: The services provided and used should be powered by renewable energy
Efficient: Products and services should use the least energy and material resources possible.
Open: Products and services provided should be accessible, allow for the open exchange of information and allow users to control their data.
Honest: Products and services provided should not mislead or exploit users in their design or content
Regenerative: Products and services provided should support an economy that nourishes people and the planet
Resilient: Products and services provided should function in the times and places where people need them the most.

Those principles can be summarized based on the requirements a web service must fill to limit its carbon footprint[6]. The web service should:

Require minimal configuration to be in working order
Monopolize as little as possible the resources and the user
Require as few servers as possible to make the web pages

Like any other eco-design model, it must be considered early as possible in a product’s lifecycle. The product’s entirety and its functionalities will impact resources consumption.

Web eco-design: Best practices

The Responsible Digital Design Collective[7] is a French collective that brings together experts and private and public organizations in favor of the responsible design of digital services.

The community shares values that underpin the principles that govern it and its actions:

Transparency: Delivering a discourse of transparency and truth, fighting greenwashing
Diversity: Accept diversity within the community and outside the community
Openness: Share and open to all its achievements, writings, and tools
Responsibility: Be accountable within the community and be accountable for impacts outside the community, especially in the design of digital services

To help with the implementation of web eco-design, the collective released the “Web eco-design: 115 good practices”[8] book. This book is very concrete to guide the user in designing websites or web services, with one hundred and eleven best practices for each life cycle stage. They have been developed by recognized experts and validated by institutional partners such as representatives of user companies and professional federations.

Also, in France, the best practices and recommendation sector is Opquast. Opquast is a company that specializes in web quality. Created in 2004 by a team of web professionals, its purpose is to improve the web. Its missions are as follows:

Act to allow as many people as possible to access web services
Improve web services by simplifying and facilitating their use
Help professionals and organizations develop their skills and impact websites’ quality, accessibility, and sobriety.
Train, federate, support, and develop an ecosystem of people and organizations committed to improving the Web.

In 2012, Opquast released its Green-IT checklist[9]. This checklist provides seventy-two good practices to reduce the environmental impact of numeric devices and tools, overlapping with the 115 best practices provided by the Green IT collective.

Web eco-design best practices can be implemented during the three main phases of a web service’s lifecycle: design, development, and hosting.

Design

The design phase of a web service is crucial to the final product’s environmental impact.

The best practices recommended during this phase can be summarized as follows:

Creating a design that is simple, clear, and tailored for the web
Choosing the most suitable technology
Precisely specifying the need and removing non-essential features
Adapting media to the viewing environment
Compressing and optimizing assets

Development

Web developers have the responsibility to optimize web services’ performance. Implementing a few rules can help in building an eco-friendlier web service.

Limit the number of HTTP requests
Favor static pages
Minimize and compress assets (CSS sheets, Javascript scripts, media,…)
Cache resources efficiently
Avoid unnecessary database queries and optimize the others
Avoid expensive and unnecessary animations

Hosting

The host chosen has a significant impact on the environment. By choosing a green web host, a host that combines economic servers with renewable energy offsets greenhouse gas emissions, electronic waste, electricity consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced[10]. The six criteria to bear in mind are:

WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) management
Data center energy efficiency
Sustainable purchasing policy
Corporate social responsibility policy
Renewable energy power supplies
Carbon offset

The type of storage in the chosen server also matters. It is less eco-friendly to manufacture Solid State Drives than hard drives. However, this is quickly offset when the application requires lots of input and output as they consume three times less electricity and thus require less cooling. Furthermore, SSDs are much quicker than hard drives: the processor is utilized for a shorter period, allowing for more valuable processes per number of constant processors/servers. Lastly, one SSD can replace up to 5 fast hard drives[11].

Using virtual servers instead of a dedicated server that will not be used to its full capability or storing data in the cloud avoids draining resources unnecessarily.

To go further…

Resources

[1] Jones, N. (2018). How to stop data centres from gobbling up the world’s electricity. Nature, 561(7722), 163–166. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06610-y
[2] Bordage, F. (2015). Eco-conception web — Les 115 bonnes pratiques. Editions Eyrolles.
[3] Website carbon calculator. (2018). https://www.websitecarbon.com/
[4] Mon convertisseur CO2. (n.d.). monconvertisseurco2.fr
[5] Sustainable web manifesto. (2019). https://www.sustainablewebmanifesto.com/
[6] Le Web design écologique, éco-conception, ou encore Green UX : Comment et pourquoi le mettre en pratique ? (2020). Arquen.
[7] Collectif conception numérique responsable. (2019). Green IT.
[8] Bordage, F. (2015). Eco-conception web — Les 115 bonnes pratiques.
[9] Opquast se met au vert : la liste Green IT est sortie. Opquast. (2012).
[10] Best practice n°66. Choose a green web host. (n.d.). Ecometer Rules.
[11] Best practice n°69. Choose servers with SSD storage. (n.d.). Ecometer Rules.