3 things on realizing our sustainable website
Today we live in a highly digital world, and the use of our laptops and smartphones is a growing burden on our environment. With every click, social view, AI prompt, or digital purchase, CO2 emissions are created, hurting our environment, and impacting the wild animals we protect as Wanicare.
An example of these growing problems is that data centers in the Netherlands alone currently use more electricity than the whole of Amsterdam, that is more than 4% of all electricity in the Netherlands! And with the growing use of social media, AI, and other internet resources we need to change our approaches and might need to overthink our habits.
Now we have launched our new website, with the great help of digital agency Kruso we have created a website that puts a minimum burden on the environment. With this project, Wanicare and Kruso want to contribute, and above all show that tangible results can be adopted by any organization to reduce their digital footprint, by using clever and modern solutions.
Step 1: What clever and modern solutions? For example, Kruso builds the website with images automatically encoded in AVIF and WEBP formats, resulting in a fraction of mainstream formats like PNG or JPEG images. Using them at 95% of the quality means that while indistinguishable from a full-quality image, the file size is 6x smaller. The website relies on a minimum of JavaScript, which is relatively inefficient. By taking full advantage of the features offered by the latest HTML and CSS specifications, we were able to implement a thoroughly modern look and feel with almost no JavaScript code. Also, color usage matters too. We use darker, less bright colors that take less energy to render on displays than lighter ones. Therefore, the website site features darker green than bright white, so less energy is used to display the site on devices. There is much more, so if you want to learn more about the Kruso approach, please check the link below.
Step 2: Truly Green hosting by LeafCloud But all this clever coding and engineering needs to sit somewhere in a data center, and therefore we work with LeafCloud. On their server, the new website requires roughly a mere 4 watts to run, which translates into an estimated 2.5kg of CO2 every year. But that is not where it stops: LeafCloud re-uses the rest heat of its servers directly to heat residential spaces, and as such it reduces emissions of gas usage, returning a net -7kg of Co2 per year for the Wanicare website. This means the already very lean Wanicare website footprint is fully compensated, contributing to our goal of creating the most sustainable website possible.
LeafCloud shows that there are always sustainable options to make, also when it comes to data centers. Although many of the traditional data centers make efforts to switch to cleaner energy, carbon emissions continue to impact the environment following the growing use of social media, Artificial Intelligence, and streaming services. If you want to learn more about LeafCloud, please check the link below.
The results: Are we changing the world? Quite possibly we are not changing the world with the Wanicare website, but we believe this website can a little bit of inspiration and create awareness for other organizations, as their digital footprint is not always top-of-mind. Assuming our website practices can be adopted by virtually any organization there is large potential:
Being carbon neutral, we save approximately 3.5kg of CO2 per year for the hosting alone compared to more traditional data centers, already assuming they use green energy. And the new footprint compared to our old website has been reduced roughly 7x. With 6 million websites in the Netherlands alone, the potential calculates to millions of kilograms of CO2 every year.
And that is before calculating the actual page views: A quick check with Carbon Calculator shows that the new Wanicare website is roughly 4x more efficient per page view compared to the average page view. Based on the average internet user in the Netherlands who roughly visits 20 pages per day, this is a total yearly potential saving of 76 million kg of CO2 if similar improvements are realized – that is the equivalent of 1.1 million solar panels!
What can you do? First and foremost, Wanicare is a humble foundation that wants to create a better world for wildlife in Indonesia. Since Wanicare started almost 15 years ago, we have also focused on education and awareness, and we hope our small website project can do the same. As such we might inspire you to do two simple things:
Talk to your colleagues inside your organization, and possibly use the Website Carbon Calculator to initiate a discussion about the digital footprint of your digital channels.
Otherwise, like so many things it’s all about your personal actions: AI applications, social media, and web surfing all come with an environmental impact, so please use it responsibly: For you, generations to come but also for all the animals that live on earth.
If you have any questions or want to know more about our website project or the Wanicare Foundation, please reach out to us or the valued partners that helped us to create this sustainable website.
Else we want to thanks Kruso, LeafCloud and the many photographic contributions of Jonathan Beilby, Julien Brethiot and many others.
Kruso - The most sustainable website in the Netherlands based on 8 smart choices LeafCloud - The Truly Sustainable Cloud Wanicare Foundation: Contact