How to Green Your Website

The Internet doesn’t really have a tangible impact on the environment, right? Well, wrong. The Internet – as it continues to achieve rapid growth – is actually an increasingly notorious guzzler, even though we may not necessarily see or fully understand the way it affects the earth.

First of all, it takes a significant amount of electricity to run computers. Take that power consumption and combine it with the amount of energy it takes to run the power plants that generate that electricity, as well as the carbon emissions produced by manufacturing and shipping all these computers, peripherals, and accessories. On top of all that, there’s a huge amount of emissions generated by the data servers that contain all the information that you’d find on the Internet.

So basically, the more people use the Internet, the bigger it becomes, and the heavier the requirements are to keep everything up and running.

There are plenty of ways you can help minimize the environmental impact of the Internet. You can start with your own website (or blog) – your own little home on the Web. It doesn’t matter what your content is about; it doesn’t even have to have anything to do at all with saving the earth. Check out the following eco-savvy tips on how to “green” your website and reduce its footprint.

Choose green web hosts

Do a simple search and you’ll find plenty of lists of green web hosts, like this one from Web Hosting Geeks. Whereas a typical hosting operation requires a huge amount of energy to support cooling controls, fire suppression systems, Internet connections, data security systems, and more, these green web hosts employ eco-friendly alternatives to achieve that, like using solar or wind power to run their operations. Host your website or blog on these guys’ servers and you’ll be making an immediate impact on maximizing the efficiency of the Web.

Neutralize your website’s carbon footprint

How do you do that, you ask. It’s not as complicated as it sounds, and you won’t even need a computer engineering degree to take on the task. All you have to do is visit GreenWeb.org and register. The site monitors registered websites against carbon emissions and takes actions to make these websites (including yours) more energy-efficient. These actions include calculating the amount of carbon dioxide emissions generated per website usage, purchasing green certificates to neutralize the websites’ environmental footprint, and sponsoring NGOs and environmental groups to perform green initiatives like, say, planting trees.

Consider renewable energy sources

Environmental consciousness has helped introduce new products in the market that are designed to meet consumers’ power requirements in an eco-friendly way. Solar panels and wind turbines, for example, transfer your energy needs so that you can use renewable resources. If you’re unsure where to start, consult green contractors like Greenwerks to help you examine the most viable options for your home or office.

Go for simpler website designs

Flash websites with fancy animations actually use more power than sites with simplified designs. That’s because they require heavier loads and more intensive data sets to transfer information to and from servers and computers. Simple websites, furthermore, can increase your site speed (good for search rankings) and decrease server requests. The less time people spend waiting for your content to load, the less energy they use. So unless you really need high-resolution pictures, fancy JavaScript widgets, high-definition introduction videos or Flash presentations, we’ve got two word for you: ditch ‘em.

Think of eco-friendly color schemes

And we don’t mean painting your site various shades of green. Do you know that LCD monitors use more energy to display dark colors? Old computer monitors, meanwhile, that use cathode ray tubes will consume more energy trying to display lighter colors. With this in mind, you might want to refresh the look of your site or blog, all while making it more energy-efficient.

Show how printer-friendly you are

It would be great if we could all shift to a paperless economy, but right now Internet users still print a lot of information – like documents, E-mails, articles, even books – on paper. While you cannot stop them from using up as many sheets of paper as they want, you can format your site in such a way that when a user needs to print some of your information, printer use is minimized. GreenPrint, for example, is a solution that can save users as much as $100 a year on paper and ink. You can even go the extra mile and remind your visitors of best practices in printing.

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