When we discuss carbon emissions, our mind sets down pictures of billowing chimneys, cars and planes that guzzle fuel, and felling of trees. But imagine if I told you, every time you click on a website, you are adding to the global pollution? I know it may seem counterintuitive, yet website carbon emissions make up one of the vital but unnoticed aspects of digital pollution. These are five stats that make a point of the fact that website carbon emissions are more of an issue than you may have been led to believe.

1. The Internet Is a Major Carbon Emitter

Did you know that the internet’s carbon footprint is equivalent to that of the aviation industry? And, if the internet was a country, it would be the fourth largest producer of CO2 in the world, roughly 1.6 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually. Some of the areas of computing include websites, online videos, data centres, network infrastructure among others and this totals to this figure. From the messages that you forward, to the movies that you watch, or the sites which you visit, it is not as clean as it seems.

2. Let’s Consider a Single Webpage Load

It's hard to imagine, but one single page load on the average website generates 0.6 grams of CO₂. That might not sound like a lot, but consider this: the normal website receives around a thousand visits to its pages in a month. This means for instance, a normal website could be releasing up to 72 kilograms of CO₂ per year, from mere page loads alone. It is very important to note that this is just one website and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of similar sites out there. Multiply that by the millions of websites and digital products, and you start to get a clearer picture of internet’s carbon footprint.

3. Data Centres Are Energy Vampires

Each time you enter a website, information is transmitted from servers in data centres all around the globe. These data centres are infamous for their power consumption, with energy needed for the running of the servers and cooling of the same. For instance, data centres are said to contribute to about 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions and this is equivalent to the emissions of the airline industry. What is even more frightening is that this figure is projected to rise to 50 percent by 2025 as we become even more dependent on digital products.

4. Images and Videos Are the Biggest Culprits

Do you ever stop to think about the effects of that clear picture that you uploaded on your website, or that HD video that you posted on your social media accounts? The largest source of carbon emissions for a website is the media files such as images and videos. High definition images and videos entail the use of more data and hence more power and more carbon emission. Amazingly, it was found that images and videos constitute 90% of a webpage’s total weight.

5. Website Optimisation Can Make a Huge Difference

The good news? It is amazing to note that there are many things that can be done to minimise the carbon footprint of your website. This is where image optimisation, efficient coding and green web hosting comes into play, as it can reduce your site’s emissions by a great deal. For instance, one research indicated that by compressing images and implementing the lazy loading approach, page load time can be cut by up to 30%; thus, the carbon footprint is reduced by up to 30 %. If all the websites in the world applied these basic optimisations, we could reduce millions of tons of CO₂ emissions per year.

Conclusion

While website carbon emissions are a form of pollution that cannot be seen, their effects are very much tangible. With the increased use of digital technologies in our daily lives and the increased use of video and image-intensive platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, it is our duty to make sure that our online activities are sustainable. It is therefore important that we all take time to understand the hidden carbon cost of our web activities and do everything possible to reduce it in order to help fight digital pollution and protect the environment today. Next time you browse the web, remember: each click matters. If you would like to start tracking your websites carbon emissions create an account with us today.