The biggest question is, what is sustainable web design?
Well, this might be the best solution to online carbon emissions. You see, physical carbon emissions are not the only form of energy that pollutes the earth. Each time you open a tab, or submit a document, you use up tons of energy, and therefore, the demand for electricity grows, falling upon you and your coworkers, friends, and family to fix it. With a sustainable plan in sight, this new idea for websites is healthier for both us and our ecosystem.
No-code Websites and why they are bad for the Environment
With so many organizations and start-ups choosing no-code platforms such as Squarespace, Wix, and Weebly to build their websites, we decided to explore pros and cons of using no-code solutions from the prospective of sustainable web design. To calculate the carbon footprint of various websites including those built with no-code templates, we used resources such as websitecarbon.com and www.ecograder.com.
The obvious pros of no-code website solutions are low cost and ease of use. However, this “ease-of-use” comes with a catch. The no-code platforms offer templates that are pre-packaged with functionality for every imaginable use case adding tons of unnecessary code to the webpages.
While no-code platforms provide anyone with intuitive tools to make beautiful websites without knowing anything about how a website works, they are terrible for the environment. Among 20 no-code websites we tested, only 1 scored within the range of Global average (E) as defined by websitecarbon.com, the other 19 scored (F) which is well below the average.
With around 51% of the world using the internet nowadays, the websites that are built with “zero-code” structure consume more energy than humans can afford to provide. The “mindless browsing” that happens so often has to optimize for a better internet.
What can we do to help the Environment?
At LIMIT8, we made a conscientious choice to adhere to sustainable web design practices to minimize our impact on the environment which includes:
- Use of green web hosting
- Use of minified CSS and JavaScript code
- Image optimization
- “Lazy load” of images and videos
We build websites from scratch utilizing open source platforms and tools that allow complete control over the code. We include only the code that is actually required to power each website and we optimize every website for best performance.
If you decide to optimize your website for the healthier choice, you can spare as much as 150 kg of CO2. That’s enough CO2 for boiling water in 18,710 cups of coffee. And an unhealthy website emits the same amount of carbon that 7 trees absorb in a year.
If your company is interested in applying for a sustainable web-site, scroll down.