Why brand owners’ online activity needs to align with environmental credentials

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n our increasingly digitised world, it’s very easy to forget that not everyone uses the internet. In fact, roughly 40% of the world’s population aren’t currently active internet users.

This is likely to change in the coming years.

The number of internet users has grown exponentially in recent years, from 2bn in 2015 to 4.66bn last year. UK-based creative agency We Are Social has calculated that in 2019, approximately 1m people started using the internet every single day that year. According to a report by ClimateCare in 2021, internet traffic has tripled since 2015, while Cybersecurity Ventures, a researcher into the global cyber economy, predicts there will be 7.5bn internet users by 2030.

When taking in these statistics, it is worth considering what this means from an environmental perspective. In the race among beverage brand owners to reduce their carbon footprints, are they also considering their digital movements?

As things currently stand, the internet is a huge polluter: If it was a country, it would be the sixth-largest polluter in the world. The emissions generated by digital consumption are equal to those produced by the entire airline industry, and these levels are expected to be surpassed fairly quickly. Before the end of this decade, internet usage could potentially comprise 3.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

There are two main factors behind this pollution: the manufacturing and shipping of internet hardware such as computers, smartphones and servers, and the powering of this hardware through coal, gas, renewable or nuclear energy.

Every time a search engine is used or a web page is loaded, greenhouse gases are emitted. The more design-heavy a website is in terms of videos or images, the bigger its emissions. According to Website Carbon Calculator: “The average web page tested produces 1.76 grams of carbon dioxide per page view. For a website with 10,000 monthly page views, that’s 211kg CO2 per year”. Those websites that automatically start playing videos are particularly big offenders.

It's ironic, then, to open the website of a global blended whisky brand and see a large video playing across the page, under a banner that lists ‘sustainability’ alongside other tabs such as ‘our whisky’.

Emails are another big problem. The average email send generates 4g of CO2, while those with large attachments could produce up to 50g of carbon dioxide.

Awareness around this issue is in its infancy but growing. The previous few years have seen publications such as Wired and the BBC run articles with titles such as “Your website is killing the planet”. Tools are also springing up to help companies (and individuals) understand their digital carbon footprint. While Website Carbon calculates the carbon footprint of a web page, the Carbonalyser add-on evaluates an individual’s internet browsing. This provides a report outlining how much data has been downloaded within a time frame, how much electricity that data required and how much carbon it generated, then compares this to the greenhouse gases emitted by driving a car.

With such information readily available to consumers, the pressure is on for companies to clean up their digital acts.

So, what can you do? First of all, choose a host that uses renewable energy to power its servers. GreenGeeks, DreamHost and iPage are currently the named top three by Tech Radar, for instance.

Secondly, establish what your website’s carbon footprint is and work to reduce it. This might involve using basic typeface and small images, which require less energy for loading (unusual fonts can apparently add a file weight of 250kb). Avoid video and improve user navigation, so that the user can easily find what they’re looking for. Steering clear of JavaScript and keeping your code clean also make a difference.  

Some companies are doing interesting things in the name of small or neutral web carbon footprints, such as Volkswagen’s Canadian website, which has created a carbon-neutral net experience related to its electric vehicles. In a dedicated area, it has removed all colour and the ‘images’ are drawn using text to form detailed mosaics. To load the page uses just 0.022g of carbon. The top of the page declares: “A more sustainable site for a more sustainable future”. It’s just a shame the entire website wasn’t designed along the same principles.

Design studio Formafantasma has also redesigned its website to use basic text and a table of contents on the homepage that’s reminiscent of Wikipedia in terms of helping visitors navigate quickly to what they’re looking for. Small images are used to illustrate previous projects, but these have to be clicked on from a list of the company’s work, rather than automatically loading when you open the page.

Finally, look at your company’s email output, especially when it comes to e-marketing and mailing lists. How often are you sending them? How big are these files? Do they really need so many big images?

One of the first things suggested to consumers who want to reduce their internet carbon footprint is to unsubscribe from mailing lists. If you’re sending out lots of big, bells-and-whistles emails, you’re going to lose subscribers very quickly, especially as education around this issue grows.

As increasing numbers of the planet’s population become regular internet users, it’s time to clean up your brand’s digital act.