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Being sustainable online is not something that’s always considered… and yet with just a few simple steps you can make a big impact.

When running a business there are so many things to consider: finances, resources, time management, legalities, staffing, location, marketing and so on and so on.

But one factor that has been traditionally ignored is now arguably more important than ever. Not necessarily because it will make or break your business, but because it will make or break our entire existence.

And that’s sustainability. How your business impacts the environment will affect future generations to come – and how you are viewed today too. 

Without marketing, most businesses will not succeed. But without a sustainability-first marketing strategy, every business will fail long-term. 

Here are a few reasons why you should care about sustainability in your business and then I’ll show you how you can make some changes quickly and easily today.

Why you should be digitally sustainable

You may have heard of it already – the Triple Bottom Line. It’s a business concept rising in popularity in companies that care about their social and environmental impact. 

Put simply, the Profit, People and Planet are the three overlapping elements that matter most in business. 

Profit because a business needs to make money to survive.

People because each person involved (e.g. stakeholders, employees, customers etc) are all impacted by business decisions. Therefore the business should try to do right by its people and the wider community.  

Lastly, Planet because businesses are a huge polluter and contributor to climate change. Without changes in business, there is no real change that can stop global warming. Businesses need to take responsibility for this – and not just large corporations or the more obvious perpetrators. As we’re about to see, even a small online business has an impact! 

If the Internet was a country, it would be the 7th largest polluter in the world and is expected to grow considerably by 2030. If we embrace sustainability in our work, we can create a web that is good for people and planet.

Sustainable Web Manifesto

If the Triple Bottom Line isn’t something you’re willing, or able, to commit to, then I hope your business isn’t aimed toward Millennials and Gen Z customers/audiences. That’s people aged 10 and 41 to be precise.

This is because these are the generations that care more about sustainability than ever before. And they are actively avoiding or punishing businesses that don’t share those same values. 

Google is packed with examples of this. But studies I find most interesting is that non-sustainable brands aren’t just being ignored, but sustainable-first brands are being actively rewarded! Gen Z for example (age 10-21ish) will pay MORE to purchase sustainably:

Gen Z in the UK are 1.4 times more likely to pay a premium for eco-friendly products

Four out of five UK consumers adopt more sustainable lifestyle choices during COVID-19 pandemic

Why younger generations are more willing to change in the name of sustainability

But overhauling your entire business can be daunting, not to mention costly. Instead, you can focus on your digital footprint and make a huge impact in just a few clicks! 

Before we dive in, you might want to see how you’re doing now. You can test your site using the tool Ecograder and you check just how high the CO2 emissions are for your website using WebsiteCarbon.com.

It may be hard to get your head around, but the internet itself is HUGE contributor to climate change. In fact, if the internet were a country it would be the seventh-largest polluter in the world.

Website emissions are only growing year on year – accelerated by the pandemic – and they likely aren’t going to slow down. Nor should they have to.

The internet is a miraculous thing. It educates, connects and is responsible for a huge amount of the economy. This isn’t an article bashing the internet. 

Rather than limiting access or saying we should reverse internet use, I am asking instead that website owners themselves consider how they are running their website.

With only a few minimal changes the internet would no longer be such a giant burden on the environment.

We can continue to go online guilt-free.

And as business owners making these changes will not only make you more attractive to customers but can save you time and money too.

The internet has a very real environmental impact, even if we can’t see it.

Kinsta

How to be digitally sustainable

So let’s jump into how businesses can become more digitally sustainable. Below are at least five actionable changes you can make today.

Minimise your website

The average web page today is nearly four times as big as it was in 2010 (HTTPArchive.org). And sizes are only going up! But there are lots of things you can do to minimise the size of your website and each page. 

• Delete unnecessary pages. If you have time you can do a site audit to see repetitions or out-of-date information. There are likely lots of pages that are completely redundant or can be rolled into one. 
• Reduce your HTTP requests. If you’re not sure what that means or how to do it, take a look here. But a couple of ways are enabling caching and removing excess plug-ins.
• Compress your images. Upload your images at scale or use vector graphics with smaller file sizes. Files like GIFs and videos can take up a huge amount of room. More compression tips here.
• Minimise custom fonts. These can also add up in size so be certain before uploading fonts to your website. If you do need to, make sure they are web-safe.
• Turn off autoplay on videos. Huge video files loading and playing each time someone clicks on a page amounts to a massive amount of data usage, seriously bulking your website. Not only that, autoplay can be really annoying for the user experience!
• If your website is quite large consider offloading to a third-party who is green friendly. Consider shifting your media hosting to a public cloud storage provider.

Hosting

Other than what’s on your website itself another big impact can be your hosting service. Each website needs to be ‘hosted’ on online servers and, as you can imagine, these servers take up a large amount of energy. 

Most hosting providers use standard grid electricity and either don’t know or care where that energy comes from.

Switching host providers to one who values sustainability and lowering their carbon emissions requires absolutely ZERO changes to your website or business. It truly is the quickest and easiest win!

You can check how ‘green’ your hosting is using the Green Web Foundation tool.

However, this tool doesn’t include everyone and I was concerned when my own hosting provider didn’t show up on there. I have been with my host Lyrical Host for many years and I have never had any issues – in fact, I actively enjoy being their customer as their customer service is the best I’ve ever experienced. So I reached out to them directly and heard back straight away putting my mind at ease! 

“All of our servers and network infrastructure (including the cooling systems) run on 100% renewable energy, and the data centres with use have a PUE (power usage effectiveness) rating of 1.12. This is a measure of how efficiently the data centre uses energy (with the lower rating the better), and most hosts have a PUE of of 1.2 or higher. We also replace hardware with newer, more energy-efficient options as it becomes available (as long as it wouldn’t impact your site’s performance.

Our autoscaling technology which allows sites that are suddenly very busy to use resources from the whole platform also ensures that sites don’t use more resources than they actually need (and so don’t consume more power than is needed).

Finally, every month we plant trees through our partners Trees For The Future which helps both to offset the carbon emissions from our servers and also provide families in developing countries with sustainable food sources, livestock feed, wood fuel, and products to sell. We also make regular donations to a coral reef conservation and education charity (chosen by our customers).”

Streamline your software

By simplifying the online tools and software you use the fewer internet emissions you’ll produce.

This can be as simple as moving from using a tool for everything e.g. one tool for your to-do list, one for your spreadsheets, one for mind-mapping, one for organising files – to one tool that does all of those things in one! 

I know I have definitely been guilty of wanting to try out all the new shiny tools out there, but once you’ve found a system that works for you make sure you delete your accounts elsewhere and focus on the few that do the most work.  

And for the software you’re considering – you can check their green credentials using this tool. 

Reduce data storage and transfer

Is your email inbox full to the brim? Does your hard-drive strain under the bulge of PDFs, JPEGs and documents?

You might find that it’s not only costing you money, time, and stress keeping every file under the sun, but it also hurts the environment too.

Each file you keep is data and data is taking over the world. If you think your inbox is full – imagine everyone else in the world’s and it adds up to a huge amount of carbon emissions keeping all that data at our fingertips. 

In fact, it’s estimated that reducing our data by 75% would equal more than a 75% reduction in our emissions and energy use. That’s because data centres make about 3.8% of global carbon emissions! Ouch! (Source) 

Thankfully cloud providers are making commitments to reduce their impact on the environment.

By 2030, Google will be carbon-free and Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft have committed to using only renewable energy to power their data centres too. 

That’s a start but we can all do our part too, starting with…

• Aim for inbox zero. Not just a productivity or self-care hack, the less emails you keep the better for the environment! Get deleting and unsubscribing from all those emails you never read.
• When transferring data use services like WeTransfer which deletes the data after a certain amount of days. Rather than hanging around in an inbox somewhere.

Dark Mode

Did you know over 80% of people use ‘Dark Mode’ on their smartphones?

Whether you personally use dark mode or not, a huge portion of internet users are.

And there’s big environmental benefits to doing so. White backgrounds use more energy than dark ones. 

Studies have shown that dark mode also saves battery life on phones and laptops.

I myself am an avid dark mode user. In fact, if a website I go onto doesn’t support dark mode I usually just click off it right away. The user experience (and my poor eyes!) matters more to me than anything else. 

Avoid Flash

Adobe Flash software is already on the way out thankfully with it now being phased out worldwide.

However, it is always best to check if you’re still using it. Flash has not only has a history of having weak security, but it also consumes huge amounts of energy and data.

It is especially poor on mobile devices – which is where the majority of us are now consuming content.

So it’s definitely time to jump off the Flash wagon and move to alternative solutions like HTML5.

Eco Energy Provider

Don’t forget when you’re using the internet you’re likely using a device that is plugged in to or powered by your electricity.

Where that electricity comes from can therefore make a big difference to how much resources you’re personally responsible for using.

By opting for a ‘green’ energy provider you’re proving there is demand for sustainable energy.

And saving the world one phone charge at a time.

Turn off your computer already

Do you leave your devices on stand-by 24/7?

If you take nothing else from this article there’s one thing you can definitely do and that’s SWITCH OFF your computer!

That’s right, when you’re done for the day the worst thing you can do is shut the lid and walk away.

Make sure you shut down your laptop and/or unplug it.

That way it’s not zapping up power all night – power you’re both paying for and is damaging the planet.

Better SEO

This tip arguably deserves a post all on its own but is still important to note.

The better your Search Engine Optimisation, the better for the environment.

Why? By optimising your content, more people are likely to find it easily, saving them from clicking around searching for the content they want.

Search Engine

Lastly, as you search using the web consider using an eco-friendly search engine like Ecosia. It works exactly the same as Google but it’s a non-profit with revenue going towards planting trees.