Environmentally Friendly Web Development

With the concern for our effects on the environment growing on a daily basis, it is important to raise awareness of all the areas of our daily lives that produce carbon emissions. Most people would not have thought that surfing the internet could produce greenhouse gases, but the reality of the situation is that it does and ‘green’ web development can help reduce this.

The concept of green web development first began when developers and web designers acknowledged that files on servers, data centres, personal computers and connected networks created a complex online infrastructure that consumes a large amount of electricity. As we all know, the excessive use of electricity leaves a fairly large carbon footprint on the environment. Developers found that they could reduce these affects by incorporating environmentally friendly development into their practices (through optimizing pages and code).

Web developers can adopt a “green” attitude in a number of ways. Firstly, they can reduce HTTP requests by increasing their use of CSS or Javascript files in website development. Secondly, they can reduce the number of external objects, such as images and video, used on a given website. And thirdly, they can use the improved CSS capabilities to convert images (thereby also reducing the use of external objects).

It is also important for developers to speak with their clients regarding green development practices. Raising awareness about the impact that web development has on the environment and what initiatives exist to balance it out is the first step to reducing the problem. Most clients will be very open to incorporating green initiatives into their web design.

Posted by: Anne Mehla

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