Green Browsing

A relaxing yoga YouTube tutorial to start off the day; being in contact with friends and family – always and everywhere; satis fying your curiosity whenever the need strikes; switching off in the evenings by streaming a film – these are just a fraction of what we use the internet for on a daily basis.

It’s time for the internet to become greener

We’ve been connected to the internet 24/7 for a while now and it doesn’t only affect our mental health in a negative way but also contributes to something we’re often not aware of: global warming. The huge energy consumption of the internet damages our environment and that is why is important to learn how to design an energysaving, climatefriendly website.

The internet would be the sixth-largest country in terms of energy consumption

The following comparison is often made in order to understand how high the energy consumption of the internet actually is: if the internet was a country, it would be the country with the sixthhighest energy consumption.

Despite the many advantages of the internet, the immense electricity required and the resulting level of CO₂ emissions must not be ignored. But what can we do to make the internet greener and more sustainable? What can we do as users, but especially as a company whose daily business revolves around digital products, to design this world to be more sustainable?

A bar chart showing the CO2 emissions of the most emitting countries. Behind China, the USA, India, Russia and Japan, the internet would be in 6th place with 2.8% of global CO2 emissions.

Conscious browsing

As users, there is a limit to what we can do but we can do something! For example, we can try to spend our time online efficiently and constantly remind ourselves what we are doing and why we are on a particular website, as with every click energy is consumed.

Alternatively, we can use sustainable internet services, such as the search engine Ecosia which uses the income generated from searches to plant trees. There are also tools and browser addons which show what kind of energy is used to power our (favorite) websites and based on that, we might want to find an alternative.

Curious? Read more now.

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