This week I had the pleasure of giving a talk at Smashing’s “Meets Sustainability” event, alongside fellow speakers Chris Adams and Ines Akrap. Videos of all talks and the Q&A are available to watch online, but in this article, I want to provide a written version of my talk, One Small Step for Web Kind.

My hope for this article is to communicate the key message of my talk, which is this:

The title of my talk echoes Neil Armstrong’s famous words when stepping onto the surface of the moon, and it felt fitting for a talk given at a time when the scale of the digital sustainability problem has apparently transcended Earth. With Elon Musk talking about putting data centers in space, and even on the moon itself.

It would be easy to throw our hands in the air and say “I give up,” but I hope to inspire you to believe that our hope and actions matter now more than ever. To explain why, let me travel back in time to the beginning of my own journey in web sustainability.

From small beginnings

When I started Wholegrain with my wife Vineeta in 2007, we had a mission to use our business for good and we put sustainability at the heart of everything that we did, from the way that we worked, to the supplies that we purchased, to how we traveled, and to the types of clients that we worked with, but despite our best intentions, that wasn’t actually everything.

It was only in 2016 when we were preparing to certify as a B Corp that I realised that we had a huge blind spot. The B Corp assessment asked us how we measure the environmental impact of the products that we make, and furthermore, how we reduce that impact. Having previously specialised in the eco-design of physical products, I knew exactly what this question meant, as I had done exactly this type of assessment and design in the past, but I had always assumed that digital products didn’t have an environmental impact. They were “virtual” and living in a “cloud.” Weren’t they?

When I read these questions in the B Corp assessment, it quickly dawned on me how ignorant I had been, and to be honest, I was really embarrassed. Of all people, I had the experience to know better.

This realisation kick-started a mission that has since been at the center of Wholegrain, to understand the impact of the web, and to figure out what we can do about it. At that early time, searching online, the number of people who I found talking about this topic could be counted on one hand, such as Tim Frick, Mike Gifford, and James Christie. True pioneers out there in the wilderness.

I also found a lone academic paper on the subject, reporting the total emissions of the internet to be 2% of all global emissions, equivalent to the aviation industry. This was a startling statistic. There was very little information, and very few people talking about it, but it was a start, and it inspired me to go further.

That starting point led me to develop the first methodology for calculating the emissions of a single website, so that we could benchmark our work and find ways to improve. It led our team to then look at their own work in a new light and begin to evolve their approaches to design, development, content, and hosting, and we began to share what we were learning through talks, tools like WebsiteCarbon.com, collaborations like the Sustainable Web Manifesto, and content such as blog posts, our Curiously Green newsletter, and in 2021 my first book, Sustainable Web Design.

At first, most people were skeptical, believing that the digital world doesn’t impact the physical world. But slowly, slowly, people began to engage with the topic. And those people who engaged with the topic went on to make changes in their own work, speak to their colleagues, write their own articles, give talks, develop new tools, and even write books.

Skip forward to today and while the AI race may have made some people feel that the digital sustainability challenge is now too big to solve, we should stop and look at how far we have come. In an industry that claims to be forward thinking, digital sustainability was not on the agenda 10 years ago, apart from those few pioneers speaking into the seemingly endless void. Now, in 2026 there is a significant level of awareness of the impacts of digital technology, not just in the industry, but even in the general public. There are a growing number of events, podcasts, blogs, and tools, not to mention that a global standard for web sustainability is well on its way to fruition thanks to this ever-growing community of passionate people. On top of that, every day that I log into LinkedIn, I see someone with “digital sustainability” or “sustainable web design” in their profile or their company description. The culture has changed radically in 10 years, and this is thanks to every single person who stopped to take notice and cared enough to do something, however small.

It all matters, and every small action does matter, however imperfect it might be. If you optimise your email newsletter or switch to EcoSend, that one action scales to thousands of emails every time you send a message. If you optimise your website, that impact scales over thousands or perhaps hundreds of thousands of visitors, and if you slow down your use of AI, you slow down the AI race just a little bit. Furthermore, when we talk about the things that matter, sharing knowledge and ideas, we multiply our impact further, having a ripple effect that extends out to horizons that we will never see, but will likely be greater than the direct impact that we can see.

Seth Godin says that culture is simply the phenomenon that “people like us do things like this,” and I believe that in this spirit we can change the culture simply by daring to do things differently in line with our own values. We may face resistance at first, but gradually we disrupt the flow of the status quo to the point that the culture in our teams, in our organisations, in our industries, and society at large, begins to change.

My friend Nick Whitnell often likes to quote Buckminster Fuller, who loved to illustrate this with the analogy of a ship. Huge ships have immense momentum and are almost impossible to turn. The forces resisting them from turning are so great that it’s almost impossible to even turn the rudder, let alone the ship itself. To overcome this problem, ships have a tiny extra rudder attached to their main rudder, called a trim tab. This trim tab is small enough that it can be moved in the water, and when it does so, it creates a small pocket of low pressure that slowly moves the big rudder. And as the big rudder then moves, gradually the whole ship changes direction.

We may feel small and insignificant, but we are all the trim tabs of our society, quietly creating pressure to turn the seemingly unstoppable ship that we are all on, if we choose to. We just need to dare to stick our little oar out into the oncoming flow of water and trust that in time we are helping to steer the ship.

So with that, I hope that I’ve inspired you to believe that we all do matter, that the future hasn’t been written yet, and that we should get up each day and do our best to represent a version of the world that we want to live in, knowing that how we show up today shapes the world that we step into tomorrow.

We are obviously a WordPress agency but that decision wasn’t made lightly or without considering all of the options. If you’re reading this it probably means that you’re interested in WordPress, worried about its security levels (don’t believe the press, its secure!) or we’ve linked you here.

Either way, welcome! Lets get started…

01. Trusted & Secure

It’s incredibly easy to make WordPress secure, mainly because the core is so well maintained and patched so the addition of hosting and domain encryption or SSL certification adds to the security. You may have heard the not so pleasant hype that WordPress isn’t secure but powering over 43% of the web, there is a reason WordPress is so well established and such a trusted platform. Based on its share of the internet, WordPress hacks are actually a lower proportionality. As with most CMS platforms, the security does also depend on maintenance and the actions of the developers / owners and so with Wholegrain’s Maintenance, that security is optimised for you.

02. Simplicity

It’s easy to build user friendly interface, making it easy for you and your team to on-board, update and edit your site. This level of control means your site won’t need a developer or expert to update it – saving time and budget! WordPress enables consistent, iterative and long-term growth, not a new site every few years – its that simple.

03. Scaleable growth

The WordPress framework makes it easy to create multiple websites under one umbrella, maintaining consistency of your brand whilst also enabling some great opportunities to grown your wider digital estate in a easy, logical way. Not only that, it can also handle everything from simple forms to e-commerce thanks to the use of a combination of out of the box and custom functionality. For Wholegrain, we have our own WrodPress theme that pushes this adaptability even further!

04. SEO friendly

WordPress not only comes with its own core SEO functions, but it’s also enables easy SEO best practice. At its foundation, WordPress is built using clean, structured code – which SEO loves! You can easily add custom permalinks and manage meta data to further feed your WordPress site to the search engines, which also help with your accessibility too. WordPress also enables fast loading and image compression with ease, making the site more sustainable and as we always say at Wholegrain – a sustainable site, is an SEO friendly site.

05. Open source

Meaning you own your own site, and have a community of expert knowledge to lean on and collaborate with. For us, this is a huge benefit and our team learn and grow form the community all of the time (and vice versa). There is a side effect of this too, which we don’t like to talk about, but should you ever decide to move away from Wholegrain, finding a developer to work on your site is also easy because of this open source nature.

06. Cost effective

This may be last on the list, but it has a big impact. Firstly, lets start with the lack of licensing fee for the core software and because it’s open source, its free to install – none of those nasty Drupal updates that cost a fortune every year. You will have read further up that WordPress has a large community behind it and this manifests plugins, themes and a professional network of developers meaning not everything needs to be from scratch and support is easy to find.

So WordPress is safe, cost effect, great for sustainability and SEO whilst also enabling some strong growth of your site. It’s easy to see why WordPress is Wholegrain’s platform of choice.

We recently launched version 4 of the Website Carbon Calculator, our free tool to help accelerate the shift toward a more sustainable Internet. We make this available because we can’t build or maintain every website in the world, that in itself isn’t sustainable! Tools like this help to contextualise website emissions to take steps on your own digital estates.

But the ones we do build? We make sure they’re sustainable as they grow.

We work with many people post launch, and after retesting our current client’s homepages and service pages, the average score was a ‘B’. 

A ‘B’ is a good score that indicates sustainable progress, but we’re never satisfied with ‘good enough’. We know it’s possible to reach an ‘A’, and that’s what we strive for. Websites should always be evolving toward better performance, in line with their business growth.

Where there’s growth, there can be bloat

Okay, I recognise that is not the sentence we all wanted to read – but it’s the truth! As businesses grow, there’s often an urge to add more to the website. It’s natural, but sometimes it leads to unnecessary bloat. And while adding more can feel like progress, it can hurt the site’s performance and impact the user experience.

We start builds with low-carbon, efficient code, but that’s just the beginning. The real goal is to make sure that every person interacting with the site has a meaningful, enriching experience. This is where education and collaboration come in. Together, we can make sustainable design choices that benefit both the planet and the people interacting – internally and externally.

A true balancing act! But it is possible; Humanitarian Practice Network is a shining example of displaying varied types of content without increasing its impact on the planet and giving a rich experience for a global audience.

Digital sustainability is not a one and done

We always aim for an ‘A’ score at site launch, but we need to think of websites as living things that need care and attention to stay healthy and high-performing. That’s where continuous iteration of the site is key and keeping Experience Principles front of mind.

With us by our client’s side, we design thoughtful solutions to business developments, campaigns and product launches – demonstrating to your audiences you care about all their interactions with you. We’re on a mission, and we want to bring you along with us! If an image upload is too big, don’t worry, we’ll help you fix it and share a tip or two with your team to prevent it in the future.

Long-term vision

We can’t improve what we don’t measure. Regularly benchmarking our websites helps keep sites in flow with new tools, user needs, and the ever-changing digital landscape – like AI. It’s important to us to be transparent about our own work too because digital sustainability is a journey, not a destination.

It’s time to talk about the elephant in the room – the impact of a ‘bad’ brief.

Writing a brief can seem really daunting – especially when you are not a designer or coder yourself. But trust us, it doesn’t need to be a huge document that strikes fear into your marketing team as they try to wrangle the countless wants, needs and opinions from the finance team, senior leadership, sales execs and your best friend who just doesn’t like the site.

Avoid the panic and keep it simple.

Don’t sweat the small stuff! Adding every possible goal, detail, want and desire will confuse and complicate the responses you get. Trust the agencies responding to do the creative thinking bit and instead focus in – why are you building a new site? That should give you the overall goal. Of course it needs to X and Y and Z along the way but don’t get too fixed on those because they are not your overall goal.

Identify your target audience and put them front and centre. It’s ok for one of the audience to be your company, but remember thats just one group and 99% of website are focussed on conversion of some kind and your team are already converted! It’s also worth noting here heirachy is incredibly important – you might have 10 user groups but the site can’t whistle and dance for all of them across all of their needs and neither should it. Some pre-work on who the main site audience is will really give you a great head start on the work.

Here’s where you shouldn’t got top line and the detail will really help. Specify essential features, functionalities and integrations. Provide any open source documentation on API’s too, that always helps in terms of gathering realistic numbers and not inflated ones because the agency just doesn’t know enough. This will also narrow the field of agencies really quickly for you and make sure you get a better steer on solutions because not all team can or want to work on all platforms and integrations.

Spoiler alert – agencies know you bend the truth when it comes to budgets. It’s a lot easier if both sides are open and honest so both teams are on one page straight away. This will save time and also build trust right out of the gate whilst also making sure that the agencies responding to your brief are being as realistic as possible about the ability to deliver within your budget and time.

We don’t need more carbon heavy, clunky and chunky websites on the internet. Adding “please detail how you will make our site low carbon and accessible please” into your brief will sort those who can from those who can’t and will result in you being delivered a new, sustainable, low carbon site that will look after you well into the future. You shouldn’t have to compromise on performance or impact so this one should be your default.

It’s as easy as that! Happy brief writing!

Wholegrain has a three part mission statement.

We aim to create the best websites in the world.

We use our business as a force for good.

We work to accelerate the shift to an Internet that’s good for people and planet.

This mission runs through our organisation like a stick of rock. Sometimes it’s a balancing act. At times we are focussed more on one element than another. 

Website Carbon as an Internet for Good accelerant

Website Carbon is one of the ways we aim to shift towards a better internet. Since its launch in August 2018 the tool has been used to test over 1 million individual webpages, for free. For many, using the tool has been a stepping stone into larger actions within digital sustainability. It certainly was for me and many of my colleagues at Wholegrain.

We take the stewardship of Website Carbon very seriously as a result. It means that making any changes to the site takes time and care. The last major update came in November 2023 when we added a rating system to the tool. The ratings give more context to the results and allow for better benchmarking.

Since then the calculator has remained stable but relatively untouched, until today.

A major update to Website Carbon Calculator

On the 14th July 2025 we updated the calculator to the V4 of the Sustainable Web Design Methodology (SWDM). V4 is the latest version of the model. The process of updating the calculator has been delicate and one we were keen to get right the first time. Any issues that erode trust in the estimates the tool provides need to be avoided.

After extensive testing Website Carbon is now updated. If you have a keen eye you might see some changes to the results it provides.

How are things different now?

V4 is a major update to the SWDM and things are quite different under it. 

For one thing you might notice that the estimate your website receives in V4 is lower than in V3. Sites tested using the V4 model tend to have lower carbon estimates per page view than V3. Estimates for your webpages may be up to two thirds lower than in V4.

Why are the estimates lower?

SWDM uses data transfer as the main proxy for estimating webpage energy use. The core calculation is the total energy used by the internet divided by the total data transfer on the internet. The updated sources used for V4 of the model saw that data transfer has increased two fold. However, total energy use has fallen.

Essentially the internet appears to be operating more efficiently than previously thought. 

If the internet is more efficient do my webpage results matter less?

Not at all!

Efficiencies in the network will only go so far. The total data transfer on the internet is increasing hugely. Growth in AI and data collection continues at an increasing pace. Efficient, lightweight websites are more important than ever.

Your website’s footprint might represent a tiny fraction of the internet’s overall emissions. But a more efficient website has huge benefits outside of carbon reduction. Lower carbon sites tend to be quicker to load and have better structure. Humans like this, search engines like this, they can lead to higher conversion rates and it’s better for the planet.

API access and API endpoint

When Website Carbon launched 7 years ago it was a pioneering tool. As part of our “improve the internet” remit we offered access to the Website Carbon API endpoint to a handful of users. From today that is no longer the case.

The main tool isn’t affected in any way, but it’s important to be transparent when we make changes like this. Any people or organisations materially affected by the change have already been contacted.

The digital sustainability landscape has changed significantly since 2018. Building a similar tool to Website Carbon is accessible. For instance The Green Web Foundation has an open-source JavaScript library CO2.js. with extensive documentation and support.

The change to API endpoint access isn’t one we have made lightly. Changing the way it can be accessed allows us to put our time and energy into other areas.

Watch this space for more details about where our energy is being redirected.

Wrapping up

We’re pioneers in the digital sustainability space and have a duty to the community to continually refine our offerings as knowledge and technology evolves. We’re on a mission, and we make our tools and resources publicly available so others can learn and help mobilise this mission.

If you have questions relating to Website Carbon you can reach out to our eat@wholegraindigital.com.

If you want to dig deeper into your website’s carbon footprint speak to bailey@wholegraindigital.com about our Digital Sustainability Consulting.

If you want further reading or to take more action you can subscribe to our Curiously Green Newsletter, visit the Sustainable Wed Design site or download the Digital Declutter toolkit.

Here’s to many more years of website testing.

“Googling” something is now common language in the same way that “Hoovering” has been since in the mid 20th century. While Hoovering still means to use a vacuum cleaner, the meaning of Googling is starting to change.

The market dominant search engine is currently morphing into an “answer engine“. Before, you would search for something on Google and then click a link to find information. Now Google and many other companies are encouraging users to find information without ever clicking a link. New services like AI Overviews are causing a growing number of Zero Click Searches causing organic traffic to fall in recent months.

But organic traffic isn’t just falling because of changes to Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). Services like ChatGPT and Perplexity also appear to be partly responsible. They allow people to “search” for information without ever reaching the website source the information came from.

There are legitimate doubts of the accuracy of AI Overviews. There are also concerns over increased LLM hallucinations. Whether the information is accurate or not, how users find your site and how often people visit is changing. What we can do about it isn’t immediately obvious so we called on some experts to help. In this article Dave Peiris, head of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) at Propellernet helps shed some light on what’s happening in SEO at the moment and how to navigate it.

Summary

• Robust, reliable, fast and performant sites remain the goal. All search engines currently prioritise such sites.
• Well structured, human focussed and authoritative content is still what people and search engines want.
• Where your site features on a results page is just as important as it ever was.
• Adapting content and pages towards more specific search terms could pay dividends.
• A diverse marketing and “discoverability” strategy is key in 2025
• Economic realities and backlashes against AI may yet have a role to play in search.
• Independent and non-commercial players could be disruptors in the near future.

Discoverability fundamentals

Let’s start with the basics.

While SERPs have changed, the fundamentals for technical SEO haven’t, particularly in the case of Google. Sites with strong technical foundations and good performance metrics are more likely to rank highly for organic search results and in AI summaries.

The view from Propellernet:

Position and rank on results pages remains important. Given that AI summaries appear at the top of the page, organisations are increasingly targeting these sections to maintain authority. High search rankings coupled with strong technical SEO helps here in two ways. Dave explains that Google’s AI overviews are partly based on the Gemini model but also grounded in organic search results. They use a process called Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) which passes new, relevant information into the AI model before a response is generated.

Other platforms work slightly differently. Dave says that: 

There are many reasons for an organisation to try and opt out of Search Engines crawling their sites for AI summaries. Those trying to protect IP and content on ethical grounds aren’t penalised as such. Blocking Google’s AI crawlers but allowing Googlebot to facilitate page indexing, means you’ll still appear in organic search results. At present, this doesn’t appear to result in any punitive action or downgrading of search ranking across the major search engines.

Away from search, ChatGPT and other LLMs are slightly different propositions. Blocking access to them means they can’t use your information. You won’t appear in an answer and won’t therefore be cited. Whether this presents authoritative or traffic issues is not yet clear.

In essence, the game has changed but how you play it hasn’t. A site still needs to be written using clear markup and hierarchy, load quickly and contain useful pertinent information. 

Has discoverability strategy changed?

Yes and no.

As you’ll note from the advice above, many of the best practices on technical SEO remain. The difference is that it appears to be driving less traffic to sites. 

So what can we do to mitigate these changes?

One thing is to adapt to the new ways people are searching for information. Search is becoming more personalised and queries are becoming longer and more detailed. The example Dave gave me was about running shoes. He says:

This type of query might come from people using voice to speech features on devices. It might be from an AI deciding that’s the right query based on user data. Either way the specificity is the key.

For purpose driven organisations and businesses this might mean being more specific about your products and services. For Wholegrain it might mean we break down and describe the digital sustainability services we offer in a different way. Dave suggests that a “Best for” type section could help in the new model.

As an example our Website Carbon Audit might be described as “Best for large organisations looking to assess and reduce their website emissions“.

Our Digital Sustainability Workshops could be “Best for organisations asking “How can we reduce the environmental impact of our digital estate?” “.

This small change could prove useful for human users looking for solutions as well as “agentic” AI or LLMs.

“I think the days of pumping out huge amounts of content in order to appear in search results are on the decline”

There might be an interesting side effect from a digital degrowth point of view. This focus on specificity might mean a decline in pumping out huge levels of generic content. Dave advocates for diverse methods of brand and awareness building.  

The irony of so called digital solutions like LLMs is that it might see more efforts put towards human connectivity such as:

• In person events
• Newsletters
• Digital round tables and webinars
• Branded Discord servers or Sub-Reddits
• Digital PR

Synthetic content or dare I say it, slop, proliferates the modern internet. Building authentic connections with your audience has never been more important.

Speculation on the future of search and AI summaries

While AI and LLMs are everywhere, it’s worth considering what the future might look like. Many AI products feel like they are fishing around for a solid use case. There’s also a question of whether these businesses will ever reach viable profitability. I think we might see a limiting of free tier access and a ramping up of costs as VC firms seek returns on investment.

Under those circumstances there are some more philosophical questions to consider when it comes to strategy. I asked Dave how he felt about organisations blocking AI crawlers and opting out of the game (as far as is possible). He saw this as an ethical consideration. News Organisations and publishers in particular have issues with their content being used without explicit consent. The New York Times, for example, blocks GPTBot and Google-Extended from crawling their content.

There are budget implications to being open to AI crawling too. At Wholegrain we’ve seen charity sites experiencing huge amounts of bandwidth being used by AI crawlers. Going over band width quotas increases website hosting costs at a time when charities and not for profits are seeing funding squeezed. 

Ultimately you need to understand the implications of blocking AI crawlers from your site. Your competitors might not be as ethically minded (if you see this as an ethical question) and could steal a march on you. Alternatively an ethical stance of AI combined with a human approach to brand building could be highly effective.

The small matter of truth

The question of human truth and AI summaries also came up. Users often see search results that appear higher up the page as a source of truth or authority. We don’t know enough about how truthful users view AI overviews even when they contain inaccuracies. Users who are used to ignoring the sponsored ads at the top of the page might scroll to the organic results out of habit.

A potential backlash against the new search norms

Propellernet are taking pragmatic steps for themselves and their clients in the face of the new normal. But that doesn’t mean they can’t see an alternative future. Dave acknowledges that AI summaries on all search engines are incredibly divisive. On the one hand Google and others tell us that users are engaging with the overviews and use this as evidence of assent. But social media is full of anecdotes about AI slop and inaccurate LLM generated content. Any company going all in on new, AI heavy, user interfaces might be subject to a backlash.

A smaller player like Ecosia, DuckDuckGo might go back to what Dave describes as a “10 blue links approach”.

We might even see more independence in the search industry. Projects like OpenWebSearch.eu open the way for new players to gain traction with “ethical” search platforms. While they might not overtake Google,the possibility of more competition from more transparent sources feels like an important and hopeful one.

Wrapping up

So there we are. The search landscape is changing but in many ways the situation for businesses and organisations hasn’t changed at all that much. For all the billions of dollars invested in AI “winning” the SEO game still requires the same things. Solid fundamentals, authentic useful content and diversified channels for messaging and engaging with your audience.

Plus ça change, rien n’a changé.

Thanks to Propellernet for their invaluable input on this article.

Enormous thanks to Dave for his time and expertise in answering our questions and shedding light on the topic. Thanks too to Propellernet general manager Gill Sheen for facilitating things.

Propellernet is a team of search experts, storytellers and strategists, helping ambitious brands unlock value across performance and brand marketing. They are AI-enabled, human-led and propelled by purpose.

Since 2003, their mission has remained consistent: to hire great people, deliver outstanding work and enjoy the process along the way. A focus on innovation has driven the creation of tools such as AnswerThePublic, Blackbird, CoverageBook and Hidden Keywords.

At Wholegrain we spend a lot of time thinking about the environmental impact of our websites. Our designers create engaging, accessible layouts and craft planet and user friendly experiences. Our developers are continuously working to improve our efficient code bases. They push the envelope on what a low data website can deliver. Our project and account managers are on a mission to ensure that our clients (and their clients) get what they need in a way that is good for people and planet. The whole site from the back end to the front end is carefully considered and iterated on.

All our sites are tested on multiple browsers. They have high levels of backwards compatibility with older versions of Chrome, Safari and Firefox. At an agency level that’s normally where our consideration of browsers stops.

Recently though, I’ve been questioning my choices of tech platforms and software.

Out of all the programmes I use on a daily basis, a browser is what I spend the most time on. I’d never really thought about what browser I use or why. I hadn’t engaged with my choice from a sustainability point of view. This is strange because most of my working and personal life is spent doing just that. Curiosity got the better of me (which shouldn’t be a surprise given my job title) and I started investigating the question.

Pulling on the thread marked Chrome without unravelling my Google sweater

Much of this article is going to focus on Chrome and its alternatives. It is difficult to discuss Chrome without talking about Google as well. Google dominates browser market share in the same way that it dominates other online services:

• Search – First with a 91% market share
• Digital documents – First with a 50% market share
• Analytics – First with a 75%+ market share across different platforms
• Email – Second behind Apple with a 28% market share

Many of these products and services are widely used because they are free and default on devices. They are also used because they are good at what they do.

Google is a tech company but makes the majority of its income from advertising. Their dominance across multiple areas of the internet grants Google a monopolistic reach and influence over it. This access allows them to hoover up vast amounts of user data and intelligence through Chrome and other products. 

Myself and others see it as problematic.

Some of the others that share my opinion include the US Judiciary. Following an Antitrust ruling in August 2024, the US Department of Justice submitted a proposal stating that Google should be forced to sell off Chrome to reduce its monopolistic powers. 

In this article I will try to back up that proposal from a sustainability point of view. The intent is not to persuade you to cut Google out of your personal or professional life. Rather it is to help you make an informed decision about the environmental costs of your online activities.

Browsing the main browsers

With those caveats in place I’ll dig in.

Statistically speaking you are probably reading this article on Chrome or Safari. Google and Apple have huge dominance in the browser market. Worldwide Chrome takes 66% of browser market share, with Safari coming in second at 17.6%. Microsoft’s Edge browser trails way behind in third taking just over 5% of the market.

That means three giant tech firms are responsible for 90% of the browsers used globally. Does it matter that three companies hold the keys to how we interact with and consume content online? On an individual basis possibly not. Collectively though, especially in the case of Chrome, this dominance poses a problem for users and the environment. 

There are some obvious reasons why Chrome dominates the market. For a start, Android phones dominate the mobile market and Chrome comes as standard on them. More importantly, it works well. From a usability point of view it’s pretty solid. It’s got great developer tools and most sites are optimised for Chrome because of its dominance. It’s a rare, free, product that we use on a daily basis that works pretty much flawlessly.

It’s not just working flawlessly for its users. Google is benefitting hugely too. As the saying goes – “if you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product”. Chrome plays a vital part in Google making billions in profits from advertising. Essentially the browser is doing two things. Allowing users to access the internet and allowing Google to gather data for advertisers to use.

So what is this free product, used by approximately 3.67 billion people, actually costing us? In my opinion it costs us two interconnected things. As individuals it costs us a measure of privacy and agency in our browsing and consumption habits. 

In the context of digital sustainability, it extracts a cost that is paid by the planet.

The big data hoover

Much of what we do at Wholegrain aims to reduce the data transfer associated with browsing our clients web pages. We try to help others to do the same with tools like Website Carbon and through our writing.

In many ways Chrome is trying to do the opposite.

By some estimates, Google stores an additional 15 petabytes of data every day. If 15 petabyte doesn’t sound like much, understand that 1 petabyte is equivalent to:

• 500 billion pages of standard printed text
• or 200 million 5mb photos
• or 13.3 years worth of HD video content

They won’t run out of storage any time soon though. Google has an estimated 30 zettabytes (30 trillion gigabytes) of capacity in their (power, water and resource hungry) data centres. 

The data they collect from Chrome takes the form of a “digital fingerprint”. This is user data that can identify and target the individual habits of a Chrome user. They use seemingly benign data points like IP addresses, screen resolution, device settings etc to build up a picture of your habits and interests. This, along with data from a wealth of other sources is used to help make their advertising solutions so effective.

In effect we and our data is the product that Google extracts from Chrome.

Why is this bad?

Using the internet is an essential part of daily life. Even an aspiring neo-luddite like myself can’t deny that. Nor can I ignore the positive benefits that digital solutions bring to us all. But browsing doesn’t have to mean vast amounts of data being collected. It doesn’t have to be stored and analysed. The additional, hidden energy and environmental costs of this data collection are not essential to our daily lives.

This data gathering by Chrome plays a part in the data centre growth that has exploded in recent years. These huge data centres need power, water, space, minerals and resources. A browser which helps create a digital doppelganger has impacts in the real world.

The 2024 UN Digital Economy report states, “low-carbon and digital technologies largely compete for the same critical minerals”. Additional and extractive data collection plays a part in this. At a time when we need to decarbonise our grid as quickly as possible, big data centres are increasing energy demands from companies like Google, Microsoft and others. Renewable energy growth is struggling to keep up and we can’t afford the competition for resources.

Less tangibly these digital fingerprints are helping the global economy maintain a level of consumption that our planet cannot sustain. Humanity consumes vastly more resources than the earth has the bio-capacity to regenerate. To combat the climate crisis, the developed world needs to consume less. Being exposed to fewer and less targeted adverts would likely help reduce consumption.

It would be healthier on our bank balances, our psyches and the earth’s eco-systems. 

If Chrome isn’t so shiny, what are the alternatives?

If you would prefer a browsing experience without this hidden environmental cost, there are simple steps you can take. Making Chrome more privacy focussed is possible but is less effective than using an alternative privacy focussed browser. There are a number of options to do this including Brave and Vivaldi. Personally I’ve made the switch to Firefox as my main browser for a number of reasons.

1. Firstly it’s owned and maintained by a not for profit who are committed to building a fairer, safer internet. They want an internet “where our privacy is protected, AI is trustworthy and irresponsible tech companies are held accountable.” That sounds quite nice doesn’t it? Here’s their full Manifesto.
2. It’s a privacy first browser. It blocks trackers from the first time you install it by default. It also allows you to further enhance your online privacy if you wish. By contrast, Chrome tracks your browsing even in incognito windows.
3. Using Firefox means less data is collected and stored as I browse. This means less demand for data centres and less energy is required for my online actions.
4. Not only does using Firefox save energy use at a data centre level, there is evidence it does so at a device level too. Tests show that Firefox uses less electricity than Chrome, meaning lower browsing emissions.
5. Firefox is an open source project. This means that its source code can be scrutinised and improved by its users. A transparent and collaborative web is better and fairer for all its users.

Making the change

If you are persuaded by the arguments above, Mozilla has a handy guide for making the switch to Firefox. While I’ve been happy with the experience of using the new browser it isn’t perfect. There are some additional privacy tweaks you might want to make. More pertinently I have occasionally found that some website features, such as payment portals, haven’t worked when using Firefox. This can be temporarily frustrating, but firing up the page on Safari or Chrome fixes the issue.

This serves as a good reminder that you don’t have to jump to an alternative browser full time. You could keep using Chrome for work and switch to another browser, such as Firefox, for personal browsing. Any time spent browsing on something other than Chrome means less data collected and stored.

For the sake of the planet, we should all be striving for that.

Article update

If this article peaked your interest you can find out more on the topic in the interview I gave to Reset – Digital for Good. We discussed about the DOJ’s antitrust case against Google, browser choices, digital consumerism and much more.

Chris: Context is key

One of the primary reasons that the people behind Wholegrain work here is a want to do better – that means build more sustainable websites, consider the needs of people more centrally to our decisions and play a leading role in moving forward our understanding of what sustainable web design really means.

I can imagine this to be true for anyone working in any sector where they consider and challenge how to do it more sustainably. It can be frustrating, constantly looking for the definitive end line that says ‘this is how we do it perfectly’, but we all know that we are not there yet and to be truthful, may never be there. Not that this should stop us trying.

At Wholegrain (and in all other businesses and communities we stand beside in this space) we are continuously reading, writing, listening and sharing the latest ideas and frameworks that can push us all collectively closer to that golden state of understanding. Learning from each other and communicating new ideas is what has built the understanding we have today and it often leads to the need to pivot or unlearn what was thought to be true but now is proven incorrect. Again, not that this should stop us trying.

This past week the overall approach to Digital Sustainability was challenged, sadly not through conversation.

The following is the thoughts of Andy, who manages our Curiously Green newsletter and spends his time in and around the wider thinking on Digital Sustainability with input from Bailey, our new business Manager and Dan, our Technical Team lead – who both speak internally and externally about what Digital Sustainability looks like on a tangible level, as people on the front line of actually designing and building sites to be more sustainable. 

Andy: The latest lightning rod

The ever evolving nature of digital sustainability means that we’re constantly reading and consuming articles, reports and ideas on the topic. We keep a careful eye on developments in coding, file formats, data gathering, storage optimisation, changes to calculation models and philosophical ideas about digital usage Our website carbon calculator, Website Carbon often features in these articles in these topics, sometimes acting as a lightning rod for thoughts and findings about low carbon web design.

The most recent example is a report from the BBC called “Does what you scroll burn coal? Mythbusting energy consumption on the web”. The post on the Research and Development subsite has caused some consternation in digital sustainability circles.

The article looks at two areas:

• The effect of dark mode on device electricity usage and user behaviour
• Correlation between performance metrics and data transfer and energy usage

The good bits:

The dark mode research is interesting and goes against some of the sustainable web design advice and methodologies. In their research a small sample size of participants turned up monitor brightness levels up when using dark modes, regardless of overhead lighting conditions.

This rebound effect is potentially a useful finding. If it can be replicated across a larger sample size it would certainly change some conventional wisdom and design methodologies. We would add that any dark modes implementation should be in line with accessibility guidelines and based on user preference rather than prescriptive.

As the researchers note, further research would be required using devices with OLED screens, which is something that is noted in the Web Sustainability Guidelines.

The frustrating bits:

The rest of the report has frustrated us at Wholegrain and others in the community. The sections on performance and data transfer feel to have taken an over simplified view on areas that the digital sustainability community treat as nuanced and complex.

The report states that “performance and energy efficiency aren’t always linked, so optimising for performance may not yield the desired energy results”. This is something that we would agree with. Indeed we wrote about how strong performance metrics don’t always correlate with low site emissions in November 2023. 

Without knowing what sites were tested, it’s hard to comment further. What we can say is that we and other reputable agencies know that “Developers cannot therefore simply optimise for performance and hope that energy savings occur as a happy by-product”. Suggesting otherwise feels harmful to the industry and undermines trust and engagement at a time when digital emissions continue to rise.

This feeling of being unduly undermined continues when the researchers discuss data transfer. The researchers question whether a link can be made between data transfer and device energy use. The report raises issues where “data is used as a direct proxy for energy” going further to state that it presents a “completely fictitious narrative of how emissions are generated on the internet”, citing Website Carbon as one place this narrative is shared.

Them’s fightin’ words.

Our polite but firm response

It’s widely known and acknowledged within the sustainable web industry that data transfer is a flawed proxy for carbon emissions. I think Fershad Irani’s piece on this issue is the most eloquent and persuasive on the topic. Put simply, we know there are issues and that in certain cases it might cause some paradoxes. Where those paradoxes are proved we take note and adjust best practices.

The report discusses testing “top sites” but not what they were, how they are built and what platforms or frameworks they use. Picking holes in the sustainable web design practices without testing sites built using them doesn’t feel fair or representative. Indeed they tested the COP28 site which did an infamously bad job of implementing the “low carbon mode” mentioned in the report. The site (which was not built by a sustainable web specialist) was criticised heavily at the time and revisited when updates were put in place. Citing this website as a good example of best practice is incredibly frustrating.

In the conclusion of the BBC piece the researchers write – 

This is pretty insulting to the careful thought and dedication brought by contributors to the Web Sustainability Guidelines. Agencies like MightyBytes and Wholegrain, organisations like the Green Web Foundation, SustyWeb and individuals like Alexander Dawson, Fershad Irani, Michelle Baker, Hannah Smith and many others work tirelessly to bring nuance and suitability to the interventions prescribed. 

Next Steps from everyone at Wholegrain collectively

We’ll end this response in the same way as the report does, with some suggested next steps. The researchers express a desire to collaborate with the industry to develop “tools that allow them to accurately estimate energy”. A good place to start might be to collaborate with an organisation like GreenSpector who share similar aims. 

They could also ask to collaborate with any of the organisations and individuals mentioned above. We’re an open bunch who desperately want to do the best thing for people and planet in every way. We’re open about what we do and why we do it. We showcase our sites and think they hold up to scrutiny. We’re open to making changes if our methods turn out to be flawed. We want to iterate and improve where we can. We want accurate measures just as much as anyone else. Maybe even more so.

Our mission to “accelerate the shift to an Internet that’s good for people and planet” needs collaborators so we can continue to do the work we do for the companies we work with – one being BBC Good Food, just for reference.

Let’s talk.

The use of moving media (videos and animation) is a tricky issue in digital sustainability. 

The basic problem is this:

• Sustainably designed websites should be low weight, optimised, efficient and engaging, without being joyless and dull (unless that’s the idea). They should tell stories and/or provide solutions to problems.
• When behaviour change and alternative ways of living, working and consuming are being encouraged, storytelling is essential. Effective and engaging storytelling can be enhanced with motion, animation and video.
• Anything that is animated or moves on a site means higher data transfer, more storage use and energy cost than an alternative static element.

Balancing the cost and effectiveness of moving media is a tightrope walk. Video and animation has its place in digital design but what is that place and how best to implement it?

I posed this question to our design and development teams at Wholegrain who weighed in with their thoughts. Hopefully their ideas will leave you reeling. (I promise this is the only video format pun in the article)

How to justify the use of video and animation?

Video is everywhere online. Big tech lying about engagement metrics might have played its part in this. In spite of this, the use of videos and animation needs careful consideration and justification. 

If you try to find what constitutes justification, the answer is often “it depends”. So far, so illuminating. In the absence of any solid metrics or definitive answer, we can view the issue through a user centric and digital sustainability lens. 

First up, consider the branding of the site in question. Motion and video should be relevant to the look and feel of your site. From a branding point of view a static digital presence might help you stand out from an animated and attention seeking crowd. From a user point of view, animated elements on an informational site like gov.uk could be distracting.

What about from a digital sustainability point of view?

The “Handbook of Sustainable Design for Digital Services” offers some guidance here. They say that “videos and animations only be used when they add value to the user”. If the message can be conveyed in an engaging, accessible way in a static format, this should be prioritised. You can remove videos that are “not useful for understanding the service”. While I broadly agree, this may be too much of a hardline.

Find out what your users want and give it to them.

User research is a key part of this. Adding video explainers to a site won’t work if the audience isn’t likely to engage with them. You risk adding to the load time and carbon footprint of your site without increased engagement. This would make the digital sustainability gods unhappy. Not to mention your impatient users. 

Audience demographics and subject matter play a big role here too. Friends of Wholegrain, Earth Minutes, deliver youth focussed climate communications. They will tell you that younger, digitally native users are more engaged with video and interactive media. I (a 40-something-year-old man) get my sustainability truth bombs from BlueSky but my 16 year old niece is more likely to get them from TikTok.

Essentially, video and animation can be justified where value is added,purpose is driven, ethical conversions are improved and behaviours are more robustly changed for the better.. 

What next?

Put the user in charge, make content accessible and optimise the bytes out of it

Start by respecting your user’s choices. Animations should respect the accessibility decisions of a user’s browser. Your site code shouldn’t force animations when a user has “reduce animations” settings in place. For videos, autoplay tends to be a no-no from a user and sustainability point of view. There can be exceptions to this which I’ll detail later in the article.

Wholegrain sites put the user in charge of whether they see a video or not. Our Standard Operating Procedure is to initially replace a video player with a banner image or thumbnail with a play button over the top. The video only plays when explicitly requested by the user. This puts them in charge and reduces unnecessary data transfer. This C40 Cities page is a good example.

Accessibility considerations should be a foundational aspect not an afterthought. W3C suggests that you:

1. Start by understanding the needs of your users with disabilities.
2. Use this knowledge to inform the planning stage. Ensure that accessibility is embedded from the start rather than retrofitted at the end. 
3. This careful planning means provision for audio description, closed captions/subtitles and transcripts are included in the budget and process.
4. When the content is ready to go live on your website ensuring your media player is accessible to users.

Now all our users are firmly in control of their experience, it’s time to look at optimisation and efficiency of the content. I’ll approach this on a user experience basis, providing common use cases and how they might be more sustainable. 

Scenario One – A short video or animation to attract a user’s attention to keystone content 

You run a sustainability focussed citizens organisation. You want to help people apply political pressure to the Government on time sensitive issues. A key priority of the site is to help users to contact their MP to complain about a third runway at Heathrow.  

Solution

Content hierarchy, design and layout all play vital roles in helping users find key content on a web page. However a carefully crafted video snippet or animation can effectively attract a user’s attention. The increased data transfer and CO2 associated with an animation can be justified given the intended outcome. 

In this case format and file optimisation are key. As with images there are modern, more optimisable formats that can do a job here. While animated .gif files are everywhere online, there are smaller file formats that do the job more efficiently. 

Using a .mp4 or .webm in place of a .gif file can mean a file size saving of around 90%. You get the same effect with less storage and data transfer.

gif – 720kb

Optimised MP4 – 78kb

webm – 81kb

Now it’s just up to Rachel Reeves to listen to your users.  

Scenario Two – You want an autoplay video to demonstrate and encourage action 

You run a climate action group in the US opposing the government’s damaging policies. Your user research suggests that video is more likely to activate the younger members of your community. An engaged community will take vital action.

Solution

The majority of the time autoplay videos are neither useful nor sustainable. I’d argue that scenarios like the one above present exceptions.  In these cases it is vital to embed the autoplay videos in the right way.

As with any media on your site, files should be highly optimised. You could do this by: 

• Using video compression software to optimise the video codec to v265 rather than the less efficient v264
• Removing audio tracks for short snippets
• Reducing default resolution.

You can do this using online services such as CloudConvert or desktop software such as Handbrake.

You can see an example of highly optimised and low weight autoplay videos on this site https://osstudios.gg/ built by former Wholegrain developer, Josh. 

Scenario Three – You want to use motion or animation to generate a playful or exciting feel to your site

The climate crisis. It all seems a little bleak doesn’t it? Except that there are joyful, positive and practical solutions that exist right now. They just need a little bit of love and promotion. Your website wants to do just that and some playful animation is just the thing to bring the right tone.

Solution

Modern CSS, HTML and lightweight JS mean that low weight animations are achievable. The options available are wide ranging.

You could use:

• CSS powered cross fade animation of multiple optimised images
• Playful CSS animation in place of a gif,
• javascript powered atmospherics or interactive animations.

There is a world of creativity available to you.

In summary

• Video and animation is more data and energy intensive than static web elements. They should be used carefully.

• Ideally video should only be used when other mediums can’t fully explain a concept or service and where value is added to the user. Defining this value can be tricky. 

• Planning for accessibility is key. If you do use video or animation it needs to be user led and accessible to all your users. 

• Where the use of video and animation can be justified make sure that you use highly optimised formats.

On Wednesday 8th January, WordPress cofounder Matt Mullenweg disbanded the WordPress Sustainability Team.

The team of volunteers have been working to embed sustainable practices into the WordPress community and its processes since 2023. In that time, they’ve worked openly and honestly to ensure WordPress’s social, economic, and environmental longevity. 

We should take time to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of the now defunct team. Nora Ferreirós, Csaba Varszegi, Nahuai Badiola and Thijs Buijs worked to highlight the opportunities to improve sustainability at WordPress to a sometimes disengaged leadership. They are on the right side of history and we thank them.

Wholegrain’s stance

This decision feels regressive and extremely jarring in today’s world, where devastating wild fires ravaged California, home of the WordPress headquarters. Climate change and events should focus us all on making the world a more sustainable place.

In this case, reducing the environmental impact of the core code behind the circa 500 million websites (roughly 43% of the internet) that use WordPress would set an example for the rest of the internet to follow. Sadly, this will now not be the case – which is not good enough.

What does not change with this news, is the skills and vision of the community that has fuelled WordPress as an open source platform. The response to this decision has confirmed that this community cares about sustainability and at Wholegrain, we pride ourselves on pushing the envelope when it comes to sustainably designed and built WordPress websites. This will not change either.

The proof is in the performance of our sites, the experience of our clients and the satisfaction of their users. Excellent performance metrics should absolutely be a goal to aim for (as per the Slack conversations that have surfaced), but to focus only on those metrics is to ignore the wider picture. As an ethical, B Corp certified agency, it’s the wider picture that Wholegrain focuses on every day.

We hold our agency to a higher standard than the platform we work with. Our sites demonstrate that 43% of the internet can be more sustainable as standard. If the WordPress leadership can’t see the importance of that, then we, as a community, will continue to demonstrate how wrong they are.

Our mission continues

Our carbon calculator, Website Carbon, is the original online carbon estimator with its API being used in projects across the web, including a carbon footprint tool that the WordPress Sustainability team have been working to develop. 

All of the sites we build use WordPress’s core code and they all have high performance metrics and low carbon scores. They are built with care and attention for all users by an engaged and dedicated team who focus on their work being accessible, both on a technical and user level.

We will continue to take the best elements of WordPress, what the open source community around it offers, and use our talent and experience to elevate our sites to a higher level. 

We will continue to show how user focussed, beautiful and sustainable a WordPress website can be. 

On a personal note to those we work with

Whilst this is a really disheartening and careless move by one person within the WordPress leadership, this does not affect your website and you do not have to do anything. Nor does it affect our ability to deliver low carbon solutions for the websites that we design and build.

One person is not WordPress. We are actively choosing to stay within a community of developers and technical specialists that have made WordPress the successful platform that it is – providing open source contributions that enable us to provide the best sustainable websites to you.

If you have any worries or concerns around this news and how it might impact your site, you can reach out to Georgie and myself, our Senior Leadership Team.

Happy Black Friday!

To prepare ourselves for the most wonderful, consumption driven time of the year, my wife and I watched Buy Now on Netflix last night.

Not so much Netflix’n’chill as Netflix’n’seethe.

As efforts to decarbonise our economy and society continue to gather momentum (perhaps in spite of COP29), the film provides a reminder that overconsumption is a parallel issue in need of tackling. From a web designer’s point of view the core messages from the film are stark: 

• Overconsumption for the sake of profit is rife in the developed world
• Planned obsolescence in tech and throw-away fashion encourages dangerous consumption
• The developing world is drowning in waste from the developed world 
• Websites, digital platforms and highly effective UX all contribute to this problem

In this time of climate crisis, the web design industry needs to take note of these issues and act accordingly. 

The birth of frictionless UX

The opening section of the film features the early days of Amazon.com and Maren Costa, Amazon’s first Principal User Experience Designer. In the early days, Amazon focused its efforts on making purchasing on the site as simple and efficient as possible. Millions of experiments and data points were analysed to not only remove friction in the process, but to actively encourage people to buy, even if they were just browsing. The lessons learned at Amazon have since been replicated and refined across the internet.

But it’s not just the UX patterns and methodologies that have been honed. Website and digital platform messaging and SEO techniques have helped spread messages encouraging unchecked consumption and greenwashing far and wide.

The message to me was clear. The sad truth is that the craft of our industry is part of the problem and that web design agencies (including B Corps) help encourage excessive consumption.

Just as every job is a climate job, every website can be a climate website. Website messaging and UX is a powerful message delivery system. We know this to be true and sell that vision to clients in every project we undertake. Using the most effective methods to spread information about the climate crisis, alternative business models and customer solutions can help turn the tide. 

What can web designers, marketers and agencies do?

Given that we are discussing consumption, e-commerce is the obvious place to start. Committing to putting choice back in the hands of the user and removing consumption-encouraging nudges can help change the psychology of purchasing. Instead, let’s support purchasing choices with transparency. Clearly showing the materials, provenance, supply chain, life cycle analysis, end of life options, resale value and communities supported gives users the power to make more informed decisions. Northern Playground, a brand I’ve written about recently, do this brilliantly.

Similarly, it seems to me that some friction could be added back into the process to help respect users and the planet. One click purchase journeys feature heavily in the film. Removing those easy options and developing more conscientious UX patterns, giving users space and agency to make purchasing decisions is the ethical thing to do. Perhaps more controversially, I would advocate for removing services like Klarna to discourage unaffordable consumption and debt. 

Showcase the alternatives

Something else I’ve noted is the priority (or lack thereof) alternative business models are given by brands. Brands like Mud Jeans have prominent rental and take back schemes on their websites. Other brands with similar schemes hide these options away. Giving equal or higher positioning for circular products helps show users that alternatives to liner consumption are available.

Talk about it!

Over and above the tech solutions are the human connection solutions. A theme from the film is people having realisations that their day to day work is harming the planet and recognising that nobody is talking about it. Maren at Amazon built an employee climate justice programme which forced Jeff Bezos to at least acknowledge the problem. Nirav Patel’s recognition that the products he was designing for Facebook and Apple lead to discussions about how to do things better. As a result, Framework was born, providing computers built with repairability and end of life in mind.

Talking to friends and colleagues about the climate crisis and how it affects your personal and professional life might be the most important action you could take. Holding space for this enables discussions to take place. It’s something we’re doing at Wholegrain. Hopeful conversations and sharing of ideas might just be the thing that helps save the world.

If you’ve watched Buy Now, let me know what you think. – curiouslygreen@wholegraindigital.com.

Other than working on all things Curiously Green one of the other things I do for Wholegrain is provide a weekly round up of sustainability news to the team.  This involves connecting digital sustainability with topics like privacy, general sustainability, community building and the offline world.

The round up is occasionally (ok, always) a bit spicier than the newsletter. You’ll have to get a job with Wholegrain if you want to see it. In recent weeks though the average scoville level has risen due to a noticeable lack of positive news and solutions hitting the feed.  

It could be that the movers and shakers of the sustainability world are all bouncing around the busy summit season and don’t have time to share things. Maybe it’s the anxiety caused by US politics bleeding into other facets of life? Either way the autumn feels to have started on a downer. 

The RSS feeds I’ve curated for myself, tech communities I’m part of, podcasts I listen to and the people I follow all seem pretty glum at the moment. There are petty squabbles in the Wordpress community, rising emissions from big tech, AI is in everything, net zero commitments are rolling back.  

It’s making this Curiously Green manager somewhat blue and I wonder if other digital sustainability folks might feel the same.

A problem shared is a problem solved…

In these circumstances, I find that community mindedness is often the answer. So, as 2024 draws to a close, I thought it would be useful to crowdsource a little joy, optimism and solidarity. 

We are asking our Curiously Green community:

• What was the most impactful sustainability action you took this year?
• What digital sustainability action did you take this year?
• What is your biggest sustainability challenge for 2025?
• What would you like to read more about in CG in 2025?

To kick things off I’ll share mine – 

1. My most impactful action was changing our petrol car for an EV. We live in the French Alps with minimal public transport options. When we analysed our family footprint an EV was the next step that we could take. So far, our e-Kona is working very well but we’re waiting to see what winter brings! 
2. On the digital sustainability (DS) side I educated myself! I connected my work life with wider sustainability issues by taking a Carbon Literacy course. The course connected a lot of dots for me and changed the way I see the world. A Digital and Technology specific course will be released this autumn. If you want a DS resolution for the new year I highly recommend attending a course.
3. I think my biggest DS challenge will be the same as the wider industry – AI. Grappling with its proliferation and how to work within the tech space without using it is a challenge, let alone influencing others. Of course the bubble might burst and deal with things for me!
4. The biggest thing I’d like to see (and write about) on Curiously Green is positive DS stories from the Curiously Green community. Solutions, ideas, innovation and inspiration are what the world needs right now.

You can share your responses via the button below. If you are happy to share with the wider community I will showcase some of the best responses in a future post and newsletter. 

Thank you! 

Andy

In February 2021, I published the book Sustainable Web Design with the publisher A Book Apart. At that time, awareness of how environmental issues relate to the web design and wider digital sector was minimal and I hoped that a practical, easy to read book would help educate, inspire and encourage positive action. I also hoped that it would help put sustainability on the agenda alongside ethical factors in the digital space, such as privacy and accessibility as part of a more holistic conversation.

I’ve been pleased by the reaction to the book and the impact it seems to have had over the past three and a half years, working as one part of a wider tapestry of initiatives that have rapidly accelerated interest in web sustainability not just in the UK but internationally.

I have to give a big chunk of the credit for the success of the book to all of my colleagues and friends who made it possible by contributing knowledge and support, but I also must give much credit to the team at A Book Apart. Their fantastic house style that combines real life examples and stories with practical guidance, delivered in a format that is both concise and fun, not to mention having lots of pictures to bring it to life, is a big part of the appeal of every book they publish.

I received a huge amount of support from their team during the writing and editing process too. Yes, the editing process was painfully rigorous, but it made the book far more compelling and robust, as well as helping me to become a better writer. The fantastic print quality of the original paperback also made it a product that people treasured and passed on, and the publisher’s cult following definitely helped it to find a critical mass of readers who could then become advocates for sustainable practices within the digital sector.

The end of an era

After such a positive start, it was with great sadness that I received an email earlier this year from the team at A Book Apart informing me that they are ceasing publishing operations, and that I would need to republish the book if I wanted it to remain available for sale. From what I understood behind the scenes, the company had been having some financial challenges for a little while and over the past year they had therefore been making a series of tough decisions in an attempt to steady the ship. While I wasn’t over the moon about all of the changes, I felt that they were probably the necessary decisions to take in the context of the bigger picture.

However, many authors weren’t happy with these changes and wrote collectively to the publisher with their demands. While I understood the concerns being raised, I personally didn’t feel comfortable with the specifics of the demands or more importantly, the tone of the approach, so I quietly opted out of being involved. A majority of authors did sign the letter though, and as A Book Apart were unable to meet the demands, they instead decided to cease operations and return all book rights to their respective authors. Perhaps it just accelerated the inevitable, but to me it felt like the final nail in the coffin of a good company going through hard times.

Re-releasing the book

Anyway, the upshot of all this is that along with all other A Book Apart books, Sustainable Web Design would soon cease to be available unless I either found a new publisher or re-released it as a self published title. The A Book Apart team were extremely helpful in trying to make the process as easy as possible and after some deliberation, I decided that the path of least resistance would be to self publish it as a print on demand title using IngramSpark. In theory this would require relatively little work to set up and would then make the book available internationally via most booksellers, not just on Amazon.

It turned out that the process of reformatting the book and getting it distributed via IngramSpark was a huge amount of work and took far longer than anticipated. This was mainly due to the idiosyncrasies of the IngramSpark system and the slow response times of their support, but it’s done now and the book is once again available to buy.

So what’s the difference?

The re-released book is now available as both paperback and eBook, with a few key differences from the original as follows:

New cover design

The first difference is the cover design, which had to be changed to remove the A Book Apart branding. I designed an updated cover that echoes the original but has a bit more character, incorporating a graphic from my favourite classic Wholegrain Digital t-shirt of a laptop plugged into a cable running through a series of wind turbines as shown in the photo above.

A little additional content

After much deliberation, I decided not to rewrite the book as a true second edition because it would have been a significant project in it’s own right that I wasn’t in a position to undertake. However, I did want to acknowledge how much has changed in the world of sustainable web design since the book was first published just three and a half years ago. The updated book therefore now includes an Afterword with my reflections on how the field has changed and giving some pointers as to what the reader may want to explore beyond the content of the book.

Lower pricing

The main criticism of the book until now has been its high price. This was due to it being a low volume book from an independent publisher, but I had always wished that the pricing was more affordable. When republishing the book, I therefore reduced the price significantly. The price of the paperback has been reduced from approximately £27 to £18 in the UK and equivalent internationally, and I have also reduced the eBook price to £9.60. Furthermore, the global distribution system of Ingram’s print on demand service will also reduce shipping costs for people in many parts of the world.

Different print quality

I always loved the print quality of the original book and it was something of a hallmark of A Book Part. One of the changes that A Book Apart had made before ceasing operations was to move to IngramSpark’s print on demand service and I have to admit that I was disappointed with the quality.

When republishing it myself, I therefore upgraded to Ingram’s premium print quality option. It’s still not as good as the original paperback quality, but it is at least decent. The downside is that the high print cost combined with the reduced pricing of the book basically now wipes out any royalties that I would have got, so all the money from each copy goes to Ingram and to the bookseller such as Amazon (eek!). However, I’m lucky that I can afford to forgo royalties and I think that the lower price and higher quality print will help to maximize the reach and impact of the book.

What about the environmental impact?

The original book was printed in Germany by a company that clearly cared about it’s environmental impact and used 100% FSC Certified paper. The downside was that the books were then shipped to the publishers warehouse in the USA for distribution and posted from there to customers around the world.

Since the printing was moved over to the IngramSpark system, the environmental footprint has clearly changed. The clear upsides are that only the exact number of books needed are printed and that they are printed as close to the customer as possible, reducing the impact of shipping. IngramSpark also state that they use “paper that is high quality from sound suppliers primarily from SFI, FSC
or PEFC certified mills for the books we manufacture”. It’s better than nothing though their overall environmental policy is pretty meaningless and I can’t help but wonder exactly what they mean by ‘primarily’. How much of their paper is not SFI, FSC or PEFC Certified?

As always, the most environmentally friendly way to buy my Sustainable Web Design book is to buy the eBook, but of course there are many good reasons to have a hard copy and the paperback is there for those who want it.

Where can you buy it?

You can buy the updated book from your preferred bookseller using the following ISBN numbers.

• Paperback: ISBN 9781068759406
• eBook: ISBN 9781068759413

Due to the efficiency of the distribution systems it has showed up on Amazon first (paperback and eBook) but it is also available from others such as Waterstones and my favourite, Hive.co.uk. You could also keep your eye out for second hand copies.

And it’s still free for non-profits

If you work for a non-profit in the UK, we’re still offering free copies of the original book to help your team learn about and integrate sustainable web design practices in your organisation. Simply fill in the form on our website to request your copy.

Following my last article (“How Digital Sustainability tells powerful Thrutopian stories.”) I’ve been pondering the importance of what content goes on our wonderfully optimised platforms. Can we legitimately call a site with a low carbon footprint “sustainable” if the content on it doesn’t help us move to a more sustainable future?

The websites we view contribute to our brainprint. CISL defines the concept as – “The psychological, sociological and cultural influence and impact of brand, marketing and creative work“. Every bit of media, content, branding and art we see contributes to how we interpret the world.

We’ve just sailed past our global overshoot day. In 2024 we are set to use 1.75 times worth of resources than the earth can sustain. The European Environment Agency (EEA) tells us that Europes’ consumption patterns are unsustainable. Backed by science, they call on the EU (and beyond) to significantly reduce its consumption footprint by 2030. Putting to one side issues like mobility, food and energy production for the time being, lets focus on consumption and the sites that enable it.

How might ecommerce and other related websites show thrutopian vision of a less consumptive future?

A big hitting example

Let’s look at Patagonia’s website here. When I arrive on their site the first message about them and their purpose is:

New Arrivals

Our Fall ’24 new arrivals are here.

To me, that’s business as usual messaging and not “being in business to save the planet” messaging.

Now, I’m not singling Patagonia out because I don’t think they’re doing a good job. I love their activism and story-telling. I think they are setting an amazing example with their new business ownership model and show they care as an organisation. But they have set themselves up as an agent for change so shouldn’t they be offering a more radical vision to help change the brainprint of their users?

Using the same exercise as with hosting we could say we need to:

• produce less clothing
• make better quality clothes that can be repaired
• have transparent supply chains
• embrace circular models and internalise currently externalised costs like end of life disposal.

To get there we can encourage more mindful purchasing and clothing retention behaviours. We can campaign for better repair access, seam width standards and waste disposal laws. We can prioritise renewably powered manufacturing provided by ethical organisations.

Here’s the kicker. Patagonia is already working towards most if not all of the thrutopian points above. You can find much of the information about what they do via the links above the footer. To me that’s the most important part of the messaging on their site. The EEA would agree.

What if the Patagonia site looked like this when you first visit:

1. Instead of a consumerist message you get a call to arms for repair instead. A message to love the gear you’ve got rather than buy for a new season.
2. Then you could reorder the hierarchy of the page. The way they do business comes next, showcasing what they do differently.
3. Patagonia tells brilliant stories about important topics. That could be the next piece of brain print their users see.
4. Then a call to action. Save our marine ecosystems.
5. Finally, the links to their products.

Consumptive messaging pushed to the bottom of the landing page of the most well known outdoor company in the world. How’s that for a change in brainprint?

How might this look elsewhere?

If the science tells us we need a transition and change in behaviour, then the websites we visit should reflect that. If every job is a climate job then every website can be a climate website.

Think about the last recipe site you visited. What if the first recipes and all featured recipes you were served were part of a climate friendly diet? The other recipes would still be available, but the brainprint of the site changes.

Fashion blogs and magazine sites could do something similar to what we discussed with Patagonia above.

Travel sites could push stories and guides about low carbon travel and sustainable accommodation.

Design and construction websites could prioritise content about alternative building materials and low carbon mobility projects.

Summing up

As digital sustainability professionals we are in a position to influence all aspects of the platforms we create and manage. True sustainability comes not just from the design, build and hosting of a site. It comes with sustainable messaging about how we transition from today to a more sustainable future. In my view, we can (and should) influence the brainprint of the sites we manage to help users understand and embrace the transition required.

When I’m at my most positive and hopeful, I can persuade myself more easily that it doesn’t matter how I got to the situation I’m in. What matters is taking the right actions to move to the situation I want to be in.

When I first became aware of the environmental impact of digital infrastructure it sent me down a new path. One that took in learning about digital sustainability, sustainable web design and ultimately to Wholegrain Digital. It was, and still is, exciting to be involved in an emergent,dynamic and important movement.

All work in sustainability ultimately boils down to the question “how do we get from where we are to a more sustainable future”. The answers to that question can come in the form of different technologies, methodologies, mind sets, ways of doing business and many, many more.

Increasingly I’m persuaded that the stories we tell about how we make those moves to a better future are just as important as the methods we’ll use. I think a lot of sustainability has a PR problem. Some of that comes from efforts to push counter narratives from actors intent on maintaining the status quo. But I also think a strong enough, coherent story has been told about how the human race can thrive within planetary boundaries.

More gifted writers than me share this feeling. I recently finished the novel “Any Human Power” by Manda Scott.

The novel looks at everything that is wrong with the world (a laundry list of issues including politics, finance, climate change, toxic masculinity, porn, misogyny, inequality) and ponders how we might fix it. As if that’s not enough there’s some Norse mythology and spirituality thrown in for good measure. It’s like Ministry for the Future and the Thor:Love and Thunder script got merged together, but in a good way.

In the author’s note at the end of the book Manda introduces the idea of Thrutopian writing. If utopian fiction says “Isn’t it nice here?” and dystopian fiction asks “how the hell did we get here?”, thrutopian writing ponders where we are at present and what a route map to a better future might look like.

We’re writing our own thrutopian story in digital sustainability

I believe that digital sustainability is inherently thrutopian in its principles. At present the ICT sector accounts for an increasing level of global CO2 output as well as metal, mineral, land and water usage. Exactly how damaging the ICT sector is still being defined but knowledge and research is increasing.  That knowledge allows for a clearer picture of the current situation and how things can improve. We know where we are and need to tell the story of how we get there.

Look at hosting from a thrutopian point of view. At present we store and retain too much data in inefficient, fossil fuel powered centres. We want to move to a clean powered, ultra efficient system. How might we get there?

We can:

• encourage more mindful storage and data retention policies
• campaign for better digital privacy laws to reduce data retention
• holistically consider our browsing habits and digital consumption rates and ultimately reduce our time online
• prioritise renewably powered hosting provided by ethical organisations
• imagine and support new collaborations and innovations to put the heat from servers to good use

Those steps are a very simplified version but a thrutopian vision, nevertheless.

We can and should tell better stories about all elements of the internet. Wholegrain tells thrutopian stories in every pitch and proposal. We assess what a site or platform looks like now and propose people and planet friendly alternatives. Alternatives without set limitations but reimagined possibilities inline with an organisation’s goals.   

I think thrutopian stories and ideals have the potential to change minds and shift behaviours. I think the digital sustainability movement is doing amazing work and accelerating fast. But as an industry we tell far fewer stories than the websites we build and control.

I will follow up this article with a second that poses the question:

“Is the digital sustainability industry too preoccupied with optimising platforms for content and not looking carefully enough at the content itself?”

What do you think about thrutopian stories? Let me know at curiouslygreen@wholegraindigital.com.

Andy

Last week I wrote about how the estimated total carbon emissions of the internet have fallen according to the latest Sustainable Web Design Model. This week I’d like to shift the focus from emissions to the mineral resources required to keep the internet running. It’s important not to focus only on carbon emissions. Readers may note that the irony of this being written by the creators of Website Carbon is not lost on the author.

Today I’d like to discuss the concept of carrying capacity and its relationship with our digital lives.

Decarbonisation doesn’t solve everything

The inspiration for this article comes from this report – The environmental sustainability of digital content consumption. It’s a chunky investigation into, well, exactly what its title suggests. According to the report 60% of the world’s population has internet access. Of that 60% the average user spends 40% of their waking life online. If we are spending around 7 hours a day online (2 hours of which are on social media), this is going to have an environmental impact. It is also worth noting that global data traffic levels have risen 440% since 2019. This trend looks set to increase as AI continues to be pushed by all major players online.

The impact of our online activities is most often discussed in terms of carbon output. It’s the simplest way of measuring the impact of an hour’s streaming or loading a webpage. The report looks at the impact of our digital habits on a per capita carrying capacity basis.

Carrying capacity is how many full shopping bags you can carry from the car to the front door:

In carbon terms our current online habits account for 40% of our per capita carbon budget consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 °C. Great news! If we decarbonise the grid, we solve the issue.

As always, it’s not as simple as all that. Focussing on the carbon outputs ignores the pressure on the mineral resources required to keep us online.

Resources and carrying capacity

While our current browsing habits account for less than half of our per capita carbon allowance, that’s not the case for metal and mineral resources. The resources required for the hosting infrastructure, delivery network and devices account for a big chunk of our personal allowance.

Internet usage currently accounts for around 55% of the per capita carrying capacity for mineral and metal resources use. Put simply, rapid decarbonisation of the net can’t mitigate the environmental impacts associated with the minerals required for electronic devices.

The extraction and processing of raw materials have huge impacts. For this article I’ll put the challenges facing the mining and processing industries to one side. It’s a thorny issue but things can be done to improve standards in the industry. One thing that is worth noting is that the impacts associated are regional. Land use, ecotoxicity and working standard issues often occur in locations far from where digital content consumption is taking place.

The % of the connected population will only continue to grow. Increased living standards (and associated improved levels of online access) should be something we strive for. But we can’t ignore the fact that the increase in internet users will also require more devices. You can’t have more devices without more mineral resources. Circular models and recycling won’t solve this issue.

Ideas and solutions

There are technical and practical solutions available to us here. Ultimately though this report leaves us with a more philosophical question around how and why consume digital content.

From a practical point of view, lengthening the lifespan of devices is the first step to take. Using devices and infrastructure for longer has to be key. Choosing refurbished or second hand tech, supporting brands that promote repairability and extending device lifetimes are all practical steps anyone can take. A brand such as Fairphone is a shining example of this ethos. Second hand platforms are widely available but I would advocate for searching for a more local solution if appropriate.

Designing sites and applications that are widely supported and have backwards compatibility for older devices and browsers could help reduce devices obsolescence. Performant and lightweight digital products will work better on older devices too.

As an industry there has to be more scrutiny over the resources used in the AI gold rush. Processing chips are often used once for training large language models and then discarded. Individuals and organisations should carefully question whether the use and support of AI products is worth the tacit approval of the platform’s current working practices.

More than this I think the figures revealed in the report should prompt a rethink of how and why we use digital services. We are back into the digital degrowth territory that we’ve touched on previously.

For organisations and website owners, we should be working towards more optimised user journeys. Less pages and more efficiency equates to less time online and data stored. 

We can perform content audits both on sites and social media to identify low performing posts and content. Deleting this information and being more mindful around how much and how often we create and post aids degrowth too.

As individuals, I think it comes down to just how much time we spend online! As a starting point I would ask:

• Could you work to use your mobile less?
• Could you use an app to be more focussed when you are online?
• Could you get away from your screen once a week?
• Could you get away from it all (in a digital and real sense)?

Ultimately all the insights into material usage are more proof that we have a long road to walk when it comes to digital sustainability. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this article – curiouslygreen@wholegraindigital.com

How can we reduce our digital carbon and resource footprints even as more connected users come online?

How do you feel about your digital consumption habits taking up so much of your mineral resource “quota”?

Andy

Article citation:

Istrate, R., Tulus, V., Grass, R.N. et al. The environmental sustainability of digital content consumption. Nat Commun 15, 3724 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47621-w

As we wrote last week, there are some major changes coming to the way internet emissions are calculated. With improved data sources and research we now have more accurate data to work with. At Wholegrain we’ve always compared internet emissions to those from other sectors and countries and we have been busy updating them inline with the new model.  

Here are a few stats to mull over while drinking your organic, fair trade, hot beverage of choice.

The internet is hungry for power but seems to have lost some of its appetite

Based on new research, the annual energy consumption of the global internet is 1021 TWh. (1 Terawatt hour/TWh = 1 billion Kilowatt hours/KWh). This figure, used in V4 of the Sustainable Web Design Model, is down from the previous total of 1988 TWh in V3. At the same time, the amount of annual data transfer on the web has doubled to around 5.29 ZB (1 Zettabyte/ZB = 1 trillion Gigabytes/GB). Some of the changes are down to new research and access to data across the network. Put simply, the internet appears to be becoming more efficient, which is great news.

A dive into Our World in Data

Using an average global carbon intensity of 481g CO2e per KWh of electricity (source) we can calculate that the 1021TWh of electricity used by the internet equates to 491 million tonnes of CO2e (all greenhouse gases combined).

Our World In Data puts the global CO2e emissions at 37.15 billion tonnes in 2023. Based on the new calculations above, the internet is responsible for 1.32% of them. According to the previous model, internet emissions were estimated at 2.57% of global emissions, so the proportion of emissions from the net has nearly halved.  

The Internet vs the World

If the internet was a country (please don’t dwell too long on that image) it would be the 13th largest emitter between Mexico (512 million tonnes) and Brazil (483 million tonnes). Previously we’ve had the internet higher up the list. While 13th might be unlucky, it still puts the internet as a higher emitter than countries like Italy, the UK and France among many others. (Source)

The Internet vs the Aviation industry

We often compare internet emissions to those from air travel, but which is the bigger emitter based on the new data? Well, it depends on what you mean by air travel.

The internet had higher emissions than International Aviation in 2023 (423 million tonnes vs 491 million tonnes) – Source. However things are slightly more complicated than that. International Aviation is defined as flights that take off from one country and land in another. The associated emissions are not attributed to any one country and calculated separately by Our World in Data.

For a truer, if less up to date, reflection we could look at Global Aviation emissions. Based on 2021 figures global aviation emissions accounted for 2.5% of global emissions. On that basis we can extrapolate that today’s global aviation emissions remain higher than today’s internet emissions.

The Internet vs low-income nations

As a final comparison it’s worth noting how global internet emissions compare to low-income nations. Low-income nations are defined by the World Bank as countries with a gross national income (GNI) per capita of $1,135 or less in 2022. Countries in this category are broadly located in Central Africa, but also include Syria, Afghanistan and N. Korea.

Effectively richer nations’ internet usage emits more CO2e than most of the economic activity of the poorest countries in the world. A reminder once again of the inequalities faced when it comes to CO2e emissions. 

No time for complacency

While the improved efficiency across the delivery network is great news it does not allow us to be complacent. As the network improves so does demand for bandwidth and data. New AI services and data harvesting programmes are pushing big tech firms further from their energy reduction and sustainability goals. 
The average size of web pages also continues to rise. In the past ten years the average transfer size of a web page for desktops has increased by 130% to 2.6mb. Mobile pages have increased even more dramatically, by 295% to 2.3mb. (Source)

Efficient, accessible websites designed for people and the planet remain just as important as they ever were.

This month sees a major update to the methodology used by a number of major website carbon calculators, including Website Carbon. Version 4 of the Sustainable Web Design Model (SWDM) is currently in a consultation phase and will go live soon. Work to integrate the new model into Website Carbon will finish shortly after the new model is approved.

Before discussing the changes in this update it is worth providing a little background on the model.

A short history of SWDM

The model is the result of a collaboration between Wholegrain, Mightybytes, Footsprint, EcoPing, and the Green Web Foundation. The original model was made available in 2020 and uses data transfer as a key input for estimations. Since release the core team of collaborators have been working to refine the model.

Studying and estimating digital emissions is still a young science. As new studies and data become available the SWDM team assess and refine the model accordingly. This research comes from organisations like:

• UN agency the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
• The International Energy Agency (IEA)
• Ericsson Research

The changes in SWDM V4

On a practical level, there are a number of calculation changes in the latest version of the model. This results in a significant change to estimated emissions.

Green hosting calculations

The model adds more granularity to the “Green Hosting” calculations. In V3 of the model Green Hosting was a binary input. You either had it or you didn’t. In the updated model, there is a more nuanced approach, allowing for an adjusted % according to the level of renewables used by a hosting provider.

Embodied emissions calculations and updated data sources

More comprehensive and accurate data is now available which changes the way estimates are now calculated. This also allows for changes in embodied emissions calculations. V3 included a “Production” system segment. This estimated embodied emissions associated with infrastructure and hardware. V4 now includes embodied emissions in the three system segments or Data Centers, Networks and User Devices.

Lower overall emissions estimates

Most significantly, for readers of this article, is what this means for the results you will receive from Website Carbon or similar services. The updated calculations and data sources will result in a significant reduction in the estimated emissions per page view.

SWDMs’ formulas divide the total energy used by the internet by the total data transferred. The updated sources show the total energy consumption of the internet reducing. This is as a result of a mix of efficiency savings, improved measurements and improved access to data.

The internet appears to be operating more efficiently (explained in this article from the Green Web Foundation), meaning that the CO2e per byte transferred has reduced.

This represents a huge change for the industry. Organisations reporting digital emissions in their ESG or impact reporting will be particularly affected – albeit in a positive way. It is important to remember that this isn’t a greenwashing campaign. The methodology changes result from updated data from trusted sources. This isn’t a push to make some sites look better than others.

What this means for users of Website Carbon

Once the consultation period for the new methodology is completed, Website Carbon will update to use the V4 of the model. CO2e estimates will reduce by around two thirds compared to the previous model.

What won’t change

Your site’s rating. The rating system will adjust in parallel with the new methodology. This means that while the CO2e estimate reduces, the equivalent rating remains the same. An efficient site, built using sustainable web design principles will still be rated more highly as a heavier site.

The advantages of a sustainably designed site. A sustainably designed site will still be a highly performant user friendly site for your users. The page speed advantages will still be popular with users and search engines alike.

How your site compares to your competitors. All sites will be subject to the same model. Results and ratings will be adjusted universally. 

In summary

This change is one that the whole industry will have to adjust to and not just Wholegrain and our clients. All the major carbon estimation services will adjust to the same model so results will remain consistent.

It’s exciting to see things move in this way as the industry as a whole improves. It’s important that we celebrate and adjust to these evolutions we are seeing but also be mindful that we can’t become complacent. Global emissions continue to increase year on year and have now overtaken that of the aviation industry. Championing sustainable web methodologies and solutions is more vital than ever. We continue to strive to create an Internet that works for both people and planet.

If you have any questions or concerns related to these changes please do not hesitate to contact me.

At Wholegrain we’re currently working on a new platform for our Curiously Green content. We’ll be able to reveal more in due course. For now it’s enough to say that the team have been discussing some interesting concepts and ideas.

A case in point is an idea from senior developer, Tommy, about digital degrowth. This shouldn’t be confused with economic degrowth.

Essentially it boils down to a single question.

It’s a question that requires a bit of creativity and a different point of view to answer.

Take a B2B focussed website like Wholegrains for instance. How could we reduce the energy consumption of our site without changing the look, feel and code?

Does wholegraindigital.com work too hard?

While looking at our analytics data I noticed something. Every week the traffic profile is the same. Site visits peak on a Tuesday and then gradually decline through the week. Saturday and Sunday are the lowest traffic days.

Users view business related content during the week, reading about our service offerings, case studies and accessing our contact details. This makes sense, our clients and prospective clients tend to work a 4 or 5 day week, Monday to Friday.

At the weekend this changes. Views of business related pages reduce dramatically. Most weekend page views come from users reading our blog articles.

From a digital degrowth point of view the pages relating to our day to day business aren’t needed at the weekend. They could clock off and enjoy some downtime just like our team does.

Saturday Night’s Alright (for reading our blog)

What if at a certain time on a Friday night our landing page changed? Users might be greeted by a message saying:

“Hey there. Thanks for coming!

Our main site is closed for the weekend but you are more than welcome to check out our blog. Read about “Business for Good”, “Digital Sustainability” and much more.

See you on Monday!”

Would we lose some conversions through this approach? I’m not sure but some A/B testing would answer that. 

Is it technically possible to “close” a website for the weekend? I think our devs could find a way.

Would it make a difference? Maybe! Like all of Digital Sustainability, it’s about checking the data and using our digital platforms more responsibly.

In the coming weeks and months we’ll be using the “Curiously Green” space to explore more ideas like these. We’ll share the results of any experiments we conduct and encourage others to get involved.

Should some websites be a strictly Monday to Friday thing? Let us know your thoughts.