Environmental Statement

How We Deliver Lower Carbon Footprint Websites & Services   

The internet consumes a large amount of power, in 2021 equivalent to the total energy usage of the UK. This is from data centres through transmission networks to the device you use to access websites, all consuming electricity and creating carbon emissions.

 

Our Approach

 

Our approach to working to achieve Net Zero / carbon neutrality involves two pathways:

 

(1) reducing our emissions - this is our primary focus and involves: investment in newer more energy efficient hardware; resource minimisation through sustainable coding or using technologies or services within the technology stack; avoiding transportation through 100% homeworking and holding meetings online.

 

(2) removing emissions via carbon offsets - this is via carbon sequestration and other schemes implemented worldwide via our Climate Positive membership of ecologi which uses Gold Standard certified schemes. Check our ecologi status here

 

Gain more insights on net zero on the Carbon Intelligence website.

 

Key Initiatives 

 

These are some of the key initiatives we take to play our part in helping lower emissions for your website and marketing services:

  • Our data centre is YO26 compliant to be as energy efficient as possible with a low PUE of 1.2  or less which is classed as very efficient (1.0 lowest up to 4).
  • UPS units are 94% efficient. 
  • Platinum level power supplies are used as part of adhering to the 80plus scheme. 
  • We regularly upgrade to faster and more energy efficient hardware.
  • Code-wise we continuously optimise code for faster execution times.
  • Security-wise we deploy systems to prevent bad actors crawling our sites which means we avoid the extra power usage they would otherwise consume.
  • Content-wise we use CDNs to reduce data transfer activity and therefore lower energy usage, restrict the upload of large file sizes and support modern web formats plus use caching extensively. 
  • SEO-wise we ensure the software is very search engine friendly so the people finding the site are relevant and thereby not wasting their visit and using resources.
  • We actively encourage and help customers to review and improve their sites from a design and loading perspective across different device types. We also offer a ‘core web vitals’ review of client sites to help identify extra areas for improvements and put them into place. 
  • We encourage our clients to integrate into carbon sequestration schemes such as seamlessly planting trees when taking ecommerce orders.
  • As a business we encourage home working to reduce transportation energy use.

 

Working Out Your Website's Carbon Footprint

 

There are websites which attempt to work out your website's carbon footprint (here's one*) by comparing your site to many others on the internet. It is worth noting that ecommerce sites tend to be more content rich due to the essential use of images, videos and PDFs and will therefore be much heavier electricity users than normal CMS sites.

 

*As at October 2021, a sample of our ecommerce sites compared favourably to Amazon, ebay and the BBC being up to 20% cleaner.