Why Sustainable Web Design Matters
Sustainability isn’t just about getting rid of plastic straws or recycling your coffee cup, it also includes the digital world too. The internet might feel as though it’s not really there, but it accounts for around 4% of global carbon emissions, and that number keeps growing as our online activity skyrockets!
At Creative Brand Design, we’ve worked on projects where sustainability was a key focus, like our work for the COP26 Climate Conference: Net Zero Needs Nuclear. More businesses are prioritising eco-friendly websites, and we see this shift becoming the new standard in web design for the years to come.
So, how do we design websites that do not cost the Earth? Let’s break it down.
What Is Sustainable Website Design?
A sustainable website minimises its environmental impact by reducing energy consumption, promoting accessibility, and following ethical digital practices. The modern web comes with many challenges such as: the rise of data-heavy sites, growing energy consumption, and, on the darker side, questionable tech practices that compromise user privacy, promote misinformation, or manipulate user behaviour.
A truly sustainable website should be:
- Energy-efficient: Uses fewer resources, meaning less energy consumption.
- Green-powered: Hosted on servers running renewable energy.
- Lightweight: Optimised for performance with lower data usage.
- Puts users first: Accessibility-focused and user-friendly.
- Ethically responsible: Free from deceptive design tactics, privacy violations, or manipulative tech practices.
Sustainable web design doesn’t just help the planet, it also improves site speed, SEO rankings, and overall user experience. So really it’s a win-win.
How Green Is Your Website?
Before making improvements, it helps to see where you already stand. The Website Carbon Calculator is a handy little tool that estimates your site’s carbon emissions and compares it to the internet average.
Guess what? Even brands that are publicly all about sustainability often unfortunately are not. Take Greenpeace UK’s website back in 2022, which produced 1.51g of CO2 per visit! That’s equal to around nine trees’ worth of carbon absorption per year. Multiply that by thousands (or millions) of visits, and the environmental impact becomes massive. Let that just sink in…
Fast forward to today, and while many websites have switched to greener energy sources, some major companies are still lagging behind. Platforms like Pinterest, Yahoo, Samsung, Twitter/X and many more continue to rely on unsustainable hosting, demonstrating that there’s still work to be done. (Read more on this here)
So, what actually affects a website’s carbon footprint?
What Makes a Website More (or Less) Sustainable?
When calculating a website’s carbon impact, tools such as the Carbon Calculator look at many factors. While they might vary depending on the provider, these are the key metrics they are looking for:
1. Data Transfer & Hosting Energy Use
Every time someone loads a website, data is transferred between their device and the hosting server. The bigger the page, the more energy is required to load it. This might not seem like a big deal on its own, but multiply that by thousands (or even millions) of visits, and the environmental impact quickly adds up.
2. How Data Size Affects Energy Consumption
- Websites that are bloated with oversized images, auto play videos, and excessive scripts require more energy to load, which increases carbon emissions.
- Returning visitors consume less energy than first-time users because cached elements (like images and stylesheets) are stored on their device instead of being re-downloaded.
- A well-optimised website keeps individual page sizes below a few megabytes, reducing strain on servers and improving the user experience.
3. What’s the Cost of Web Data Energy Use?
This metric is essentially how much energy is needed for users to load your website. Calculators will look for an average energy cost related to the geographic location your website is being served from, whilst factoring in the power required for your servers, as well as the power required of the user to view the site – ie. their device, home router and network. In the UK, the estimated data energy cost is around 1.8Wh/GB, and is a key part of what makes up your overall Carbon Impact score.
4. Why Does Green vs Traditional Hosting Matter?
Your choice of web hosting plays a major role in your site’s carbon footprint. The Green Web Foundation tracks hosting providers globally, highlighting which ones use renewable energy and which ones still rely on fossil fuels. Here’s a major difference between green and traditional hosting:
- Traditional data centres contribute heavily to carbon emissions, with standard grid electricity producing around 475g CO₂ per kWh.
- Renewable-powered hosting, on the other hand, significantly reduces impact with wind energy, for example, which emits as little as 11g CO₂ per kWh.
If sustainability is a priority, switching to a hosting provider that runs on renewables is one of the most effective ways to cut your digital carbon footprint.
5. How Website Traffic Impacts Carbon Emissions
The more visitors your site gets, the greater the energy demand, but that doesn’t mean you should shy away from growing your audience. Instead, optimising caching, compression, and efficient code can help manage the impact.
- Websites with high returning visitor rates benefit from cached content, which reduces unnecessary data transfers.
- On average, 30% of web traffic comes from returning users, meaning a well-cached site can significantly cut down on repeated data requests.
By being mindful of how data is handled, optimising page sizes, and choosing an eco-friendly host, businesses can make a big difference in reducing their website’s carbon footprint while maintaining fast, high-performing digital experiences.
How to Make Your Website More Sustainable
If your website isn’t as green as you’d like, here are some easy ways to make it better for the environment and your visitors:
1. Limit Video Content
Videos are one of the most energy-consuming elements on a website. They require large amounts of data to stream, increasing both server load and carbon emissions.
- If video isn’t essential, consider removing it or replacing it with static imagery.
- If you do use video, disable autoplay—this prevents unnecessary streaming when users don’t actually want to watch.
- Host videos externally (like YouTube or Vimeo) rather than embedding them directly to reduce server strain.
As of 2025, the environmental impact of streaming video has grown even bigger than most people realise. Recent research shows that the TV and videos streaming industry now accounts for 4% of global carbon emissions – double that of the aviation industry’s 2% share. While streaming platforms have been working to improve energy efficiency, high-definition and ultra-high-definition video still require a huge amount of power.
2. Optimise & Compress Images
Essentially, use fewer images – and the images you do use should be optimised, smaller and ‘lazy-load’ into the page when required.
If you’re running a WordPress site, there are dozens of well-supported image compression plugins that can help to reduce your page weight. On many of our client sites, we use plugins such as EWWW Image Optimiser to help achieve the best sizes possible.
In addition to images, custom fonts can also require a chunk of data to load, using native system fonts, or reducing the number of font weights required by your site is another easy way to reduce load size and improve your carbon score.
3. Switch to renewables
Your energy sources matter. A lot of energy is required to actually show websites to the user, for instance to power servers & data centres 24/7, keep them cool, make them secure and optimise their routing to be fast. Such a great amount of energy usage has a negative impact on the environment, so choosing a green web hosting solution can be a big step towards becoming more eco-friendly. Look for a provider or data centre that sources most of its electricity from renewable energy. Centres located in The Netherlands are some of the leading hosting platforms in this regard.
4. Clean & Minify Your Code
Messy, bloated code makes websites slower and more resource-intensive to load. Cleaning it up improves performance and reduces unnecessary data transfers.
- Minify CSS, JavaScript & HTML: Use tools like PurgeCSS or UglifyJS to remove unnecessary characters and compress files.
- Reduce third-party scripts: Excessive tracking scripts, ads, and analytics tools slow down your site and increase energy consumption.
- Load only what’s needed: Use asynchronous loading to prioritise important elements and delay non-essential scripts.
Smashing Magazine, a leading online web technology magazine, writes: “When it comes to serious performance enhancement, we should bear in mind that literally every character of code counts. Every character represents a byte, and even after they’ve been compressed by gzip, they’re still taking up weight. CSS is a domain where we often see a lot of bloat.”
By keeping your code lean and efficient, you’re not just improving sustainability—you’re also creating a faster, more user-friendly website.
Summary
In 2025, the push for greener websites has never been more urgent. With digital consumption at an all-time high, making web design more sustainable can have a real impact in the fight against climate change. Every website, large or small, contributes to the internet’s carbon footprint and right now, only 5% of websites are powered by renewable energy, while the internet remains one of the world’s biggest polluters.
Instead of overloading websites with unnecessary animations, oversized media, and bloated code simply because we can, it’s time to design with intention. Every piece of content, every data transfer, and every hosting decision should serve a purpose, without unnecessary waste. Choosing eco-friendly hosting, optimising performance, and reducing data-heavy elements aren’t just sustainability wins, they create faster, more efficient websites that improve user experience and boost conversions.
If you’re looking to reduce your website’s carbon footprint and build a future-proof, energy-efficient digital presence, we can help. At Creative Brand Design, we’ve worked on projects that prioritise sustainability, helping brands make a tangible impact while maintaining high-performance web experiences.
Let’s talk about your green web project! Reach out for a no-obligation chat on how we can make your website more sustainable. Get in touch!