Sustainable websites
The internet uses a massive amount of natural resources including water (used to generate electricity for servers and devices) and greenhouse gas emissions like CO2. As of 2020, the carbon footprint of internet usage (and devices needed to support it) was 3.7% of all global greenhouse emissions, a number that is expected to double by 2025.
A 2021 Yale study found that the increase in working at home during the pandemic, and general shift to online activity (a 40% increase worldwide), resulted in an additional 42.6 million megawatt-hours of electricity needed to power data transmission and power centres. Data centres also use up a great deal of water —1-5 million gallons of water per day — for large data centres (the equivalent of a town of 10-50K people).
Hence, sustainable and low resource websites and platforms are crucial for conserving energy and water. Organisations like Green Web Foundation allow internet users to verify how “green” the websites they visit are. Other initiatives like the sustainable web manifesto, urge web developers to apply greener standards to their work.
Below we showcase two online magazines, Low tech magazine and Branch, which operate green websites, relying on solar power. Both also promote greener technologies through the content of their work.
Low tech magazine is a self hosted, solar powered website. In order to make the website less resource intensive, the designers decided to use a static site, using default typefaces, offline reading options and a limited colour palette. Due to its low energy usage, the website is more accessible to users with older devices and those with slower internet connections. Because it is solar powered, it will sometimes go offline during long periods of cloudy weather (it is powered by 1-2.5 watts of solar power by an off-grid system on the author’s balcony in Barcelona).
Entry last updated: January 2024
Another environmentally focused online magazine that uses solar power is Branch magazine. Published by the Green Web Foundation, it is a space for critical reflection, storytelling and experimentation.
They write: “We believe that the internet must serve our collective liberation and ecological sustainability. We want the internet to dismantle the power structures that delay climate action and for the internet itself to become a sustainable and positive force for climate justice.” On the backend, Branch has four different designs depending on where users are located and the energy demands in those locations. Branch is also available offline through caching.
Last updated: January 2024
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