What is Web Carbon?
Web Carbon is the amount of CO2 produced from website activities and has become an important point in fighting against climate change. Did you know that the average website produces 1.76 grams of CO2 per page view? Although this doesn’t really sound like much, it can mount up quickly to become a problem. 10,000 page views per month would produce 816kg of CO2 a year. That’s more than the emissions produced by a flight from London to Tokyo. The more complex a website is, the more energy it requires to load which results in a greater climate impact.
Why Should you Care?
We are currently living in a global climate emergency, 2022 is set to become the eighth hottest year on record with global warming becoming a huge problem. If we don’t take steps to reduce the emissions we’re releasing into the atmosphere, we’re going to be heading into very dangerous territory. We can expect devastating natural disasters like famine, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions which would result in countless fatalities and leave many homeless across the world. Life as we know it would change forever and is changing forever so it’s important to do something now.
One way the internet can change to become more sustainable is to hold more low-carbon websites. Low carbon websites work by minimizing the page weight (in KB), data that is loaded onto websites directly impact emissions through the server load and data transfer, this is why low carbon websites emit fewer emissions because the weight is less.
If you want to adapt to a Low Carbon Lifestyle to help combat climate change, check out our article.
