Sustainability and Web Development
By: Payal Prakash Shah
Tags: Web Development, Sustainability, Web Design, Developer, Design

Web Development

Oxford dictionary defines Sustainability as “Meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”Sustainable living isn’t a concept just for politicians or climate enthusiasts, We as Web developers and designers need to cut down the carbon from our websites.

Didn’t we shift every business online to make it sustainable? We surely did but at that time we were not thinking about Earth’s sustainability instead were wondering about the sustainability of their business.

“Sustainable business meets the current needs of its customers, without compromising the ability of those needs to be met in the future.”

Hence businesses made online presence to achieve efficiency, durability, reusability and modular construction. They didn’t actually make an online presence to minimize the greenhouse gases emission.

‘Paperless’ and ‘Eco-friendly’ mean the same for the millennial generation, but in some cases, they differ. Though web services are paperless, we cannot guarantee them to be ‘Eco-Friendly’.Watching movies via a rich media web page for a couple of hours could generate several pounds of greenhouse gases. Several pounds might seem small in the grand scheme of things, but few million views here and there might drastically affect the environment. Our designs require pixels, which in turn requires bits. Bits need physical energy such as electricity for survival. High amounts of electricity, data storage and cooling-methods for data centres have a drastic impact on our dear Earth.

Instead of just blaming the top-notch companies, we as web designers and developers can make small changes that can make the world “Sustainable”. Here, I have listed a few ways we can change for the betterment:

Finding a hosting service that uses renewable energy. This will very much lessen your website’s carbon footprint. Easy navigation. This means clearly labelled sections, so the user finds it easier to locate information, instead of wasting time clicking here and there. A site with good UX/UI will have a smaller per-user internet footprint. Periodically clean the trash from the website. Old posts, unwanted plugins and no-more used media should be revised and removed often. The more cleaner the website is, the lesser energy it consumes. Configuring website to be easily indexed by search engines quite literally cuts down on the power needed by Google to index it. Try adding SEO while designing, instead of adding after development. Keep an eye for images and videos. Limit the number of images and videos to improve the efficiency of the website as well as lighten the load. Add motos and mission statements that include sustainability of web development. This will encourage the employees to use plugins and create designs that are good for green. Mobile devices are more energy-efficient than desktops and laptops. Switching to mobile-first is a smart way. Try building a greener workspace that encourages ‘Reduce-Reuse-Recycle’ strategy.

The entire web-development and designing industry needs to make small changes to bring a great impact on the sustainable web arena. Let’s pledge to take as much effort as we can to save the energy and other resources for the future generation.