My website has its own carbon footprint? What does a website have to do with global warming? And how can I make climate-friendly decisions here? Find out here...
For example, if your website contains lots of moving graphics, your web browser will need more processing power to render the animations.
This computing power demands the graphics cards or the processor, which of course needs power.
The more moving images, the more videos, the more "golden handles" your website has, the more electricity it consumes and this electricity has to be generated somewhere. Mostly from non-renewable energies.
Of course, a website is only a very very (very very) small drop compared to other electricity consumers. In this respect, the carbon footprint of a single homepage is comparatively small. But by now there are about 1.8 billion websites and then even such mini-extras make themselves felt.
In addition, some websites contain programming errors. This causes the browser to calculate diligently in the background and consume more processor power, even though the page is not active at all. You notice it because your fan starts up and eventually runs at full speed to cool the processor.
But crucial for your website CO2 footprint is the choice of hoster, i.e. the server on the internet that runs your website. There are hosters who operate their data centres predominantly with renewable energies. You can also pay attention to this as a website owner if this topic is close to your heart.
If you've always wanted to know what carbon footprint your website leaves behind, there are now quite a few online calculators you can use to get an approximate estimate.
We thought this one was pretty nifty. (Thanks to our partners Kaiserbrand for the tip!)