Would you choose to shop with another brand over your preferred choice if their website produced fewer carbon emissions? We recently carried out a survey and discovered that nearly two-thirds (62.8%) of consumers would. People are more concerned about the planet than ever, and rightfully so: the Earth’s temperature has increased by 0.14° F (0.08° C) per decade since 1880, and the warming rate is more than twice that since 1980.

As a result, ethics, sustainability and carbon neutrality are increasingly important to consumers and brands, as is transparency about the action digital businesses are taking in those areas.

What are we doing about the carbon impact of our website?

Green For Good

Well, at the start of 2022 we pledged to clean up our act. After realising we were worse than 81% of websites tested in terms of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, it hit home that we’re part of the problem.

Our ethos is Digital For Good, and yet our website was diabolically filthy. So, we put together an eight-step plan to reduce our CO2 impact and help other 

brands do the same, and we’re publishing diary entries to let people know how we’re getting on.

What progress have we made so far with our Green For Good campaign?

1. Our site will be green to the foundations – To ensure that what sits behind our site is as green as can be, we’ve added web server caching, removed heavy tracking, combined images into a single sprite sheet, and are exploring font reduction. Oh, and we use a green host: Cloudflare.
2. If it serves no purpose, it’s gone – Here, we’ve optimised images using Kraken, eliminating ones that serve no purpose other than looking pretty. We also got rid of unnecessary, energy-intensive website content by condensing, compressing and eradicating pages wherever possible. In fact, we said goodbye to nearly half of our blog and news content, redirecting 63 pages and removing 17.
3. We’ll be smarter with images and video – Progress has been made here by replacing our hero video with a still image, instantly cutting the byte size of our homepage by 75%! We’ve also disabled autoplay on video across the site. Overall, our GTmetrix Grade (an assessment of page performance) has gone from C to B.
4. We’ll prove beautiful doesn’t mean a big CO2 impact – While we work on our Green For Good pledge, we hate the thought of the carbon impact we’re still having on the world. So, in the meantime, we created a quick solution – an optional ‘green’ toggle, for people to use while browsing our site that turns off large videos and images.
5. We’ll show you how it’s done – Every brand is different, but by sharing our thoughts and updates, we’re giving them food for thought. We’ve also developed a nifty carbon tool to help organisations understand the emissions score of their website. “From Organic’s perspective, the tool is the initial discovery portion of a much larger exercise,” says the team.

What about the other three steps – making our code spotless, WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, and creating a super streamlined experience? We’re still working on those, and will be back with updates imminently.

It’s also worth noting that we’ve explored other options along the way. But in some cases, the carbon saving was minimal, and the effort needed to make the changes required would have generated greater carbon emissions. For example, removing whitespace with no purpose, using languages with different scripts, alphabets, and syllabaries, and implementing a typographical-only website were not effective in reducing our carbon footprint. However, it’s important to mention that having a clean website can help boost your ROI.

B Corp certified

Alongside our eight-step pledge, we were also one of the first UK agencies to become a Certified B Corporation. What does that mean? We balance profit and purpose and are part of building a more inclusive and sustainable economy.

We earned an overall score of 104.6 – the median score for organisations who complete the assessment is currently 50.9.

Are carbon-neutral websites the future?

Companies are taking action to move in a carbon-neutral direction. Pushing that forward is the fact that consumers are increasingly eco-conscious and mindful of the organisations they interact with. For example, a survey by Deloitte revealed that nearly a third of people have stopped buying certain brands because of environmental worries.

Carbon neutrality is a talking point here at Organic, and with that in mind, we have a ‘carbon neutral committee’ that discusses:

• What we’re currently doing as a business
• What needs improving
• Building a roadmap on how we achieve our eco goals

We realise we’ll never have a totally carbon-free website, but we’re doing all we can to minimise our impact. We’re also considering carbon offsetting, and how to do that in the right way.

Greening our brand while meeting sales targets is a delicate balancing act, but they aren’t mutually exclusive. It involves taking a holistic view and varies according to the digital enterprise. “The carbon impact of digital contains so many variables and unknowns. But that shouldn’t stop brands from doing what they can,” says the Organic team.