7 ways to reduce your website’s carbon footprint

Reduce your website’s environmental impact

Did you know the Internet’s carbon footprint matches the aviation industry, accounting for 3.7% of global emissions? Websites, often overlooked, are a significant contributor to this. But you can take simple steps to reduce your website’s environmental impact.

These steps can cut your website’s carbon footprint by up to 90%, making it faster, cleaner, and better for the planet. Read on to learn how to implement these changes effectively.

1. Improve website performance

Optimising your website’s performance is a key step in reducing its carbon footprint. Faster-loading websites use less energy, which helps lower their overall environmental impact. Every piece of data transferred and processed requires energy, so making your site more efficient directly reduces this consumption.

Optimise images

Use tools and plugins to compress images to under 200KB without sacrificing quality. Smaller image sizes mean less energy is used during data transfer and storage, and your site will load faster, too.

Streamline code

Clean up your code by removing unnecessary scripts, minifying CSS, JavaScript, and HTML, and choosing lightweight themes. Enable lazy loading to delay loading non-essential images and media until they’re needed, which cuts down on initial energy usage.

Use caching

Set up caching to reduce your server’s workload and minimise repeated data transfers. This is especially effective in lowering energy use for returning visitors, as shared page elements, such as JavaScript, CSS, and images, can be retrieved from the cache location rather than querying the web server again.

Monitor performance

Use tools like Kanoppi to track your progress and measure how much you’ve reduced your site’s environmental impact.

Optimisation Area	How It Helps the Environment
Image Compression	Reduces energy for data transfer
Code Minification	Decreases processing requirements
Web Caching	Cuts down on server requests
Lazy Loading	Saves energy during initial load

While performance tweaks save energy, pairing them with green hosting providers can further cut your site’s carbon footprint.

2. Select green hosting providers

Choosing a green hosting provider is a smart way to reduce your website’s environmental impact. These providers run their data centres on renewable energy, helping lower your online activities’ carbon footprint.

When evaluating green hosting providers, consider a few key factors: clear energy usage reports, partnerships with environmental organisations, certifications for eco-friendly practices, and proof of renewable energy sourcing.

Green Hosting Check

The Green Web Foundation has an online checker:

Green Web Check

Switching to a green hosting provider can reduce your website’s carbon emissions by as much as 90%. This change addresses the energy demands of your site’s backend, while sustainable web design focuses on making the user-facing side just as eco-conscious.

3. Apply sustainable web design

Sustainable web design focuses on cutting energy use by reducing data transfer without compromising user experience. Combining this approach with performance tweaks and hosting upgrades can create a greener website.

One important aspect is colour choice. Lighter colour schemes use less power to light up pixels. Choose your WordPress theme carefully.

Here are some ways to make your design more efficient:

• Compress your code to lower processing demands.
• Streamline database queries to ease server workload.
• Eliminate unnecessary scripts and animations to save resources.

Keep in mind that going green doesn’t mean sacrificing style or functionality. Modern eco-conscious designs can look great, work well, and significantly reduce your site’s carbon footprint.

4. Use Kanoppi for Carbon Tracking

Tracking carbon emissions is key to building a sustainable website, and Kanoppi makes it simple and actionable. This WordPress plugin helps website owners measure and reduce their digital carbon footprint effectively.

Kanoppi uses your website analytics data to calculate daily emissions for each page, offering precise insights into areas that need improvement. This data-driven approach turns broad sustainability goals into specific, actionable steps.

Here’s why Kanoppi stands out:

Feature	How It Helps
Detailed Carbon Tracking	Identifies pages with high emissions and tracks daily progress.
Integration	Works with tools like Google Analytics to optimise based on visitor behaviour.
Optimisation Tips	Provides suggestions to improve content and design for better efficiency

“Kanoppi’s algorithms are designed to provide a reliable estimate of carbon emissions.”

The plugin also offers personalised recommendations to optimise energy-heavy elements like images, videos, and scripts. This ensures your site maintains functionality while reducing its environmental impact. Its detailed reports make it easy to set and monitor carbon reduction goals over time.

Once Kanoppi highlights areas for improvement, the next step is simplifying your website by removing unnecessary content.

5. Remove unnecessary content

After pinpointing high-emission areas with tools like Kanoppi, the next step is reducing the amount of content unnecessarily increasing your website’s carbon footprint.

Every file stored on your server—an article, image, or line of code—uses energy to maintain and deliver. Strategically cleaning up your site can ease server demands, reduce energy use, and boost overall performance.

Here’s a breakdown of how various types of content impact energy consumption and what you can do about it:

Type of Content	Impact on Energy Use	Recommended Action
Outdated Articles	Takes up storage and processing resources	Archive content older than 2 years
Unused Media	Adds to server load and bandwidth usage	Delete unused media files
Redundant Code	Requires extra processing power	Remove outdated or unused code
Auto-play Videos	High energy demand for continuous streaming	Switch to click-to-play for videos

Start with a content audit to find outdated articles, duplicate pages, unused media, and outdated code that can be removed or optimised.

Schedule regular reviews to keep your site in check. Quarterly audits can help you identify irrelevant or unnecessary content, ensuring your website stays efficient and keeps energy use low.

For media optimisation, try these practical adjustments:

• Convert large images to formats like WebP for quicker loading and reduced energy use
• Eliminate unused custom web fonts
• Write cleaner, more efficient code to minimise script sizes

By keeping your content lean and purposeful, you’ll lower your site’s energy demands, improve load times, and provide a smoother user experience.

Once your content is streamlined, the next step is to focus on delivery efficiency using content delivery networks.

6. Implement content delivery networks

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) are a smart way to reduce energy use during data transmission. By distributing content across servers worldwide, they shorten the distance data needs to travel between users and servers. This cuts down on energy consumption and helps lower carbon emissions.

CDNs can cut energy use by as much as 70%. Providers like Cloudflare are leading the way in using renewable energy and energy-efficient data centres to minimise environmental impact.

To get the most out of your CDN setup:

• Pick eco-friendly providers: Look for CDN services focusing on renewable energy and efficient operations.
• Fine-tune caching: Set up your CDN to cache frequently accessed resources, reducing unnecessary data transfers.
• Track performance: Use tools to help you measure how your CDN affects your site’s carbon footprint.

For websites with complex content, consider these additional tips:

• Use smart cache expiration settings.
• Implement purging strategies to keep content updated without extra energy use.
• Switch to modern image formats like WebP for better efficiency.

Once you’ve optimised content delivery, the next step is tackling your website’s remaining emissions through tracking and offsetting.

7. Track and offset carbon emissions

CDNs improve delivery efficiency, but they don’t eliminate all emissions. To tackle the remaining impact of your website, you can track and offset its carbon output.

Platforms like Kanoppi simplify tracking, while offset programs address any remaining carbon output. For the best results, pair tracking efforts with trusted carbon offset programs such as Ecologi.

Here’s how to manage your website’s carbon footprint effectively:

• Use the Kanoppi Website Carbon Calculator to track emissions quarterly.
• Choose offset programs backed by reliable organisations.
• Share updates about your environmental efforts on your website or social media.

Adding carbon offset certifications to your website highlights your commitment and educates users about your sustainability efforts.

The benefits of reducing your website’s carbon footprint

Creating a website that minimises its environmental impact is possible by blending technical upgrades with eco-conscious choices.

Improving performance, using green hosting, and adopting sustainable design principles form a solid approach to building eco-friendly websites. Tools that measure and track emissions help ensure these actions lead to meaningful results.

This isn’t a one-time effort – it requires ongoing updates and monitoring. Fortunately, modern tools make measuring and enhancing your website’s environmental performance easier. Regular reviews can uncover new ways to lower your website’s carbon footprint without sacrificing functionality.

Website carbon footprint FAQs

Back to News & Insights