Faced with the climate emergency, adopting environmentally friendly practices has become a priority for financial institutions. Among the actions to consider, reducing the carbon footprint of websites stands out as a key lever. By optimizing your digital presence, you not only contribute to protecting the planet, but also enhance the user experience while strengthening your company’s image.
Why does it matter?
- Today, over one billion websites exist worldwide—and 82% of them are rarely used or updated.
- The digital sector is responsible for 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
- By 2025, communication technologies could generate more carbon emissions than the ten most polluting countries combined.
What is an eco-friendly website?
An eco-friendly website is designed to minimise its environmental impact. It aims to reduce energy consumption and integrate sustainable practices from the design and development stages. For example, avoiding unnecessary animations and optimising images reduces page load time and energy use.
How do you build an eco-friendly website?
Reduce DOM size
- A simplified or optimised DOM (Document Object Model) means pages load faster and use fewer processor and memory resources, which in turn reduces energy consumption.
- By simplifying page structures and reducing DOM size, you not only lower energy consumption but also improve speed and performance—leading to better user retention and improved financial results.
Optimise downloadable elements
- Reduce image size by compressing them and using modern formats.
- Minify CSS and JavaScript files so they’re smaller and quicker to load.
- Use caching to store local copies of frequently used files, avoiding repetitive and unnecessary downloads.
Reduce the number of HTTP requests
- Minimise the number of requests needed to load a page by combining CSS and JavaScript files.
- Use image sprites (a technique where multiple small images are combined into one larger file) to reduce the number of requests made to the server for displaying visuals, improving page load speed.
- Fewer requests mean less server activity, leading to lower energy consumption and a reduced carbon footprint.
Use green hosting services
- Choose web hosts that use renewable energy, such as solar or wind power.
- These providers often adopt additional eco-friendly practices like green cooling systems for data centres and the use of low-impact materials.
- Choosing an environmentally responsible hosting service significantly reduces the carbon footprint associated with running the servers that power websites.
The benefits of these practices
- Improve user experience: An optimised site loads faster, delivering a better experience to visitors.
- Reduce carbon footprint: By optimising site elements like images and scripts, you reduce the amount of time users spend consuming resources—thereby cutting the site’s carbon footprint.
- Lower environmental impact: By reducing the size of transferred data and using modern compression formats, you decrease the environmental impact of web traffic.
By adopting these measures, you’ll contribute not only to a greener internet but also to a healthier planet. Eco-friendly websites, by being both efficient and sustainable, create a digital presence that is future-proof and responsible. Embracing green web practices is a strong, visible step toward meaningful change.