Filip Bech-Larsen , CTO , at open-source . NET CMS provider , Umbraco , explores 10 methods for enhancing the sustainability of websites .

1 . Reduce data weight

Just as the aviation industry has been introducing lighter aircraft as a means of reducing fuel consumption and emissions , carbon-conscious web designers can also help organisations to reduce web page weight .

Neil Clark , Service Design Lead , at TPX Impact , observes : “ Since the Paris agreement in September 2015 , the average web page size has increased over 70 % on desktop and over 140 % on mobile . These increases are essentially nullifying efficiency improvements that have been made in data centres . Hardware is being made more efficient , but that ’ s being wasted by making software unnecessarily heavy . Every piece of software , code and website must minimise the data transfer it causes . We must start to consider data transfer as a constraint in all of our digital projects .”

Hardware is being made more efficient , but that ’ s being wasted by making software unnecessarily heavy .

Neil Clark is a member of the Umbraco community Sustainability Team , comprising technology and business leaders from six digital agencies . The Sustainability Team recommends using tools such as www . Ecograder . com and www . Websitecarbon . com which provide a rating and grams of CO 2 emitted per web page , with a comparison to all web pages globally . This is the simplest way to check how energy-efficient a web page is , so that improvements can be made .

Thomas Morris , Tech Lead at TPX Impact , advises : “ A useful first step on your sustainability journey is to set

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