Why choose to build a sustainable site?

A sustainable approach to digital design is, in short, a collection of optimization techniques that reduce the energy required to find, store, and render websites and digital information. However, it is also more than that; sustainable (green) website design has also become somewhat synonymous with an overall conscious approach to creating and using the Internet. Meaning, that reducing the Internet’s rapidly growing carbon emissions — soon to be among the worst on the planet — isn’t the only objective, sustainable design also seeks to ensure the Internet is accessible to everyone, that it becomes an increasingly efficient, democratic, and decentralized resource for communications, programming, and information, and that it remains safe and open-source. Similarly, new approaches to search optimization and digital marketing known as ethical marketing have also become an integrated part of green design.

In the the next five to ten years, we suspect that the optimization techniques, ethical considerations, and design approaches driving the current, incipient movement to “green” the Internet, will be industry standards. Likewise, as we collectivly work toward reducing overall data storage, which requires an immense amount of energy to store ( 99% of which is never accessed again ), we anticipate a widespread public reorientation toward the Internet will occur, in which questions concerning quality, value, and purpose will factor into the way that future sites, content and services are built.

Of course, none of this is a certainty. It’s equally possibly that we could end up with the opposite — a privately-owned internet, a highly centralized, censored, hierarchal network controlled by corporations.

That’s why, when you choose to to build a eco-friendly website and incorporate sustainable practices into all your endeavors, not only will you reap the undeniable benefits, but you will also be contributing to the creation of a just Internet for all.