22nd Jul 2026
You’ve got the sustainable business, the eco organisation, an environmental charity. You’re making green choices in your supply chain, your banking, your products, your travel… but what about your website?
The place where our digital output is stored and the things we consume online may be referred to as 'the cloud' but it is far from the weightless images it may evoke. In fact it is actually made up of massive data centres that eat up 1-2% of the world’s electricity and are responsible for nearly 4% of global carbon emissions.
To lead a sustainable business or organisation it is just as important to address your digital impact as well as the physical.
Here are 3 easy and effective ways
Your website lives on a server in a data centre, which has to be powered and cooled 24/7, 365 days of the year. According to the Green Web Foundation, still around half of websites checked show no evidence of being powered by renewable electricity. Switching to a verified green host means that your website will be powered from a renewable energy source. This doesn't affect its reliability or uptime, it simply relates to the energy supply of the data centre.
Switching to a green host is the most impactful thing you can do to reduce your website's emissions and make it more environmentally sustainable.
Check to find out if your website is powered by renewable energy.
Digital storage takes up physical space and energy. The more e-mails you have and the more photos, videos, pdfs and plugins your website has, the more server space needed. The more servers, the more data centres... You get the picture. Save energy and resources by deleting anything you don't need. A less data heavy website is a more efficient one too!
Images and videos are the types of media that will likely use the most space and energy on your website. Check the file size of your photos and resize if they are huge. A photo can be two different file sizes and look exactly the same to the human eye, so anything extra is a waste. For videos, stop the auto-load and give your website visitor the choice to play it or not. As well as making your website cleaner, the two actions can also make it faster and more accessible to a range of visitors.
We spend too much of our lives online to ignore our impact there, espcially if living green values is important to you. Every pixel makes a difference!
Get in touch with us to find out how you can make your website greener. Or if you are looking to create a new website, here is a great place to start.
Green Hosting works handsomely with:
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