Why digital sustainability is the key to a brighter, greener tomorrow

In the present era of climate change, it is crucial to start thinking eco-friendly and implement measures to diminish the carbon footprint of your activities and projects. This principle equally applies to websites and the online presence of businesses. Websites and emails can also significantly impact our environment, while they need some energy resources to work. So, digital sustainability has become an essential focus for many companies and individuals.

Digital sustainability refers to using digital technologies and resources responsibly and sustainably. It encompasses various aspects, including minimizing the impact of these technologies on the environment, promoting ethical and responsible use of data, and ensuring equitable access to digital resources.

To achieve a more sustainable future, governments are legislating laws in the EU and worldwide to reduce the environmental footprint of digital assets. These laws hold companies accountable for the full lifecycle of their products and services, from production to disposal.

Key elements of Digital Sustainability

Let’s see some of the key elements of digital sustainability:

Environmental Impact

This aspect focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the environmental impact associated with digital transformation. It involves energy-efficient hardware design, optimizing data centres’ energy consumption, promoting renewable energy sources, and managing electronic waste responsibly.

Data Ethics

Digital sustainability emphasizes the ethical use of data. It involves protecting user privacy, ensuring data security, obtaining informed consent for data collection and usage, and promoting transparency in data practices. Additionally, it encourages organizations to handle personal data responsibly and comply with relevant regulations.

Digital Inclusion

Digital sustainability aims to ensure equitable access to technologies and resources. It focuses on bridging the digital divide by providing affordable and accessible internet connectivity, promoting digital literacy and skills development, and addressing socio-economic barriers to digital inclusion.

Sustainable Innovation

Encouraging this innovation involves developing technologies and solutions that address societal and environmental challenges. This may include leveraging digital technologies for different fields in our world.

The Lifespan of Digital Products

Digitally sustainable also considers the lifespan of digital products and aims to reduce electronic waste. It encompasses the creation of durable, repairable, and recyclable products. Additionally, it promotes responsible consumption by encouraging users to extend the lifespan of their devices, recycle electronic waste, and dispose of it properly.

What actions can we take to make a website sustainable?

To make a website sustainable, you can take several actions focusing on reducing its environmental impact, enhancing its performance, and promoting responsible digital practices. Here are some key steps to use in every website and a WordPress website too:

1. Hosting and Infrastructure

Choose a web hosting provider that prioritizes renewable energy sources and has energy-efficient data centres. Also, consider using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that optimizes content delivery and reduces server load. There is a tool to check if you have green hosting in the Green Web Foundation.

2. Website Optimization

Firstly, optimize images, videos, and other media files to reduce size without compromising quality. Compressed files load faster and consume less bandwidth. Also, consider using images in WebP or other next-gen formats, and for icons, prefer to use SVG icons. As a final measure for images, a good practice is to lazy load your images and videos via your theme or a caching plugin. This will load the content only when it becomes visible to the user. Secondly, you should load only the necessary web fonts and prefer the WOFF 2.0 format. Another practice is to minify and combine CSS and JavaScript files to reduce the number of HTTP requests. Last, use caching techniques to store static website elements in the user’s browser, reducing the need for repeated requests to the server. You can enable caching in the server or with a WordPress plugin.

3. Responsive Design

You should design your website responsive and adaptable to different screen sizes and devices. This ensures optimal user experience and reduces the need for separate mobile versions or apps.

4. Code Efficiency

Regarding code, it has to be clean, efficient, and follow the best practices. This improves the website’s performance and reduces server load. To minimize file sizes, unnecessary code, comments, and whitespace should be removed. Also, use server-side compression techniques, such as Gzip, to compress HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files during transmission.

5. Sustainable Content

Minimalist design and layout that focuses on essential content reducing the need for excessive graphics and complex structures will help you reach more sustainability goals. Avoid using resource-intensive elements like auto-playing videos, heavy animations, or large background images unless necessary. Also, you should encourage responsible content consumption by promoting concise, informative, and engaging content that respects users’ time and bandwidth. For WordPress websites, remember to keep only the necessary plugins. This will help in your performance and sustainability too.

6. Energy Efficiency

Power-saving measures, such as optimizing server configurations and enabling sleep mode during periods of low traffic, are a good investment in energy efficiency. Solid-state drives (SSDs) also consume less power than traditional hard disk drives (HDDs).

7. Analytics and Tracking

In this sector, you should use analytics tools prioritizing user privacy and data protection, respecting regulations like GDPR and CCPA. Secondly, avoid excessive data tracking and prioritize anonymized data collection where possible.

8. Accessibility

Accessibility is important nowadays for several reasons. Design your website to be accessible to people with disabilities, following WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards. This promotes inclusivity and ensures a wider audience can access and use your website.

9. Education and Awareness

Not all people are aware of digital sustainability yet. Raise awareness among website users by providing information on your website about its environmental impact and promoting responsible digital practices. Explain to your clients the necessity of a sustainable business and how to achieve it via website development.

What are the benefits of sustainability for your business?

Every business should improve sustainability to achieve the environmental goals we all should focus on. Below we present the benefits of following a business policy contributing to sustainability.

You can enjoy these benefits by embracing digital sustainability while contributing to a more sustainable and responsible digital ecosystem.

Conclusion

Digital sustainability is critical to ensure that we can continue to use technologies without harming the environment and society. By understanding what it is, why it’s important, and how individuals and organizations can contribute to it, we can work to create a more sustainable future. Remember that even small changes can make a big difference, and everyone can play a role in promoting environmental sustainability.