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The internet is responsible for 3.7 per cent of global carbon emissions, outpacing air travel. If the internet were a country, it would be the fourth-largest polluter in the world.
It’s why scientists have created an innovative tool to shed light on how our internet activity is impacting nature.
Developed by climate experts at the University of Exeter in partnership with Madeby.studio, Digital Impact for Species is able to analyse any website and reveal its hidden environmental costs beyond the standard metrics of CO2 emissions, water and energy consumption.
“When we visit a website, we rarely think about the environmental impact,” says project lead Dr Marcos Oliveira Jr of Exeter’s nature and climate impact team.
“But there is a high cost, from the energy consumed as the information makes its way from the data centre to your computer or smartphone, to the water used to cool servers.”
Are websites killing the planet?
To calculate the impact of any website you visit, all you have to do is paste the URL into the tool’s search bar. It will then present an overall rating from A+ to F, along with how much the search is impacting nature.
For example, YouTube.com, which processes billions of searches every month, is ranked C – meaning improvements could be made in its environmental impact. Each page view of this popular site generates 0.249g of CO2, uses 0.0011 litres of water, and 0.62Wh of energy.
For every 9,000 monthly visits, 10 litres of water is needed – enough for a capuchin monkey to survive for 77 days. Based on this number of monthly visits, nature would need an Amazon rainforest tree working for 41 days to absorb the levels of CO2 produced.
9,000 monthly visits also uses 6kWH of energy, equivalent to 1,000 anna’s hummingbirds’ daily energy use for 332 days.
“This is not about naming and shaming websites with high environmental footprint, but engaging people and prompting discussion as to how we might build a more sustainable internet,” Dr Oliveira Jr adds.
How is our website footprint calculated?
The tool uses Google PageSpeed Insights to measure the exact size of all resources loaded when you open a website page. If PageSpeed is unavailable, it will rely on the industry average page weight.
This is the total size of all files loaded when you visit a webpage, such as images, text, and video. Larger pages require more energy to transmit and process, resulting in higher emissions.
The tool then uses data from the Green Web Foundation to determine if the website is hosted on servers that are powered by renewable energy or fossil fuels.
Using the Sustainable Web Design Model, calculates CO2 emissions, energy usage and water consumption for each page view.
It translates these metrics into “relatable nature comparisons”, using a database of scientifically-sourced species data.
How can we lower our website footprint?
Consumers can only really slash their website footprint by searching less, pushing the onus onto website hosts.
Researchers say that using fewer images, limiting font use, making navigation simple and avoiding the use of videos when possible are all quick ways to reduce the internet’s environmental impact.
Using a green web host that uses renewable energy instead of fossil fuels will also help, as well as removing extra code and following search engine optimisation (SEO) guidelines to make sure people find the right pages faster.