The agency’s handbook to reducing digital carbon footprints
By Mike | 05 Jul 24
It’s time we all started taking digital sustainability seriously.
Just like how driving affects our environment, our online activities leave a mark too. Computers, data centres and networks consume around 10% of the world’s electricity. To put this into context, the entire aviation industry uses around 2-3%.
Improving the environmental impact of your agency will pay long term dividends for you.
Achieving B Corp Certification – shows your commitment to the planet, your employees and builds trust with your customers. It’s tricky to get certified but we have a recorded webinar about B Corp certifications which you may find helpful.
Reducing your agency’s carbon emissions is an excellent thing to do regardless of whether you want to become B Corp certified or not. It helps the planet, combat climate change and make the digital space a little cleaner when it comes to energy use.
The average agency consumes between 15,000 and 50,000 kWh a year depending on its size. That is roughly equivalent to the energy needed to boil a kettle between 7,500 and 25,000 times! At about 12p per kWh used, this not only adds up to a lot of money that your agency is spending on energy but also a lot of energy waste. By making some changes, you can spend less and make the environment healthier. Let’s find out how, shall we?
Streamline your servers.
If your agency is using its own servers, this is a great place to start reducing your digital footprint. Think of the servers as the engine room of your business. It’s the place where you store data locally, and any activity that happens digitally goes through your servers. So, the more efficiently they run, the less energy your agency gobbles up.
Reducing the size of your servers or switching to more energy-efficient options can reduce carbon emissions by quite an impressive amount. Investing in new, more energy-conscious server equipment can reduce your digital carbon footprint and environmental impact by burning fewer fossil fuels.
Virtualisation and cloud computing can also help optimise server usage. By using a cloud service, it frees up resources on the server to implement elsewhere in the company. So it’s a win for the environment and you!
Change your hosting.
Does your hosting provider offer green hosting? Using green hosting provides a foundation for making everything in your agency more energy-efficient.
If the hosting environment isn’t using renewable sources this impacts your entire digital carbon footprint! Consider switching to a more environmentally friendly hosting provider – like us!
Oh yes, this is a plug for our green hosting plans! Our servers are powered by 100% renewable energy, saving 45 million tonnes of CO2 every year. Data consumption is a huge cause of carbon emissions for agencies, and making this switch ensures that from the ground up your agency is running as efficiently as possible.
Read our guide to delivering simple sustainability to your clients with green hosting to learn more about how changing your hosting provider can help with sustainability goals.
Mindful design.
Websites and apps can be lean, mean, green machines too! But many aren’t! The energy consumed by complex, sluggish designs is rather shocking. Visit Website Carbon Checker to see how much energy the websites you create are using per year – it’s quite eye-opening!
When designing websites for your clients opt for minimalist designs, compress images and files, and keep code clean and efficient. This not only speeds up loading times for visitors to the site but also reduces energy consumption.
Optimise energy usage.
Ever heard of Energy Star ratings for appliances? Well, data centres have their own version. Look for providers that use renewable energy sources, and deploy planet-friendly schemes like planting trees or ones that employ energy-efficient technologies like solar parks. Then you can power your digital presence with clean, green energy!
Encourage remote work.
Remote work isn’t just convenient for your employees; it’s also eco-friendly! It cuts down on commuting and may allow you to reduce your office space. You’ll slash your carbon emissions by reducing energy bills and travel time for your employees. Plus, everyone gets to work in their pyjamas, and who doesn’t love that?
Unplugging from devices, unsubscribing from unnecessary emails and getting off of social media is great for our mental health. Well, a digital detox can benefit your agency and the environment too. Encourage your team to switch off devices when they aren’t in use and avoid unnecessary downloads and uploads.
Recycle old tech.
Time to upgrade? Don’t just throw your old gadgets into a landfill. Just because the agency doesn’t have any use for them doesn’t mean that they can’t be used to lower your carbon emissions. Recycle them responsibly or consider donating them to organisations that can refurbish and reuse them. One person’s trash is another’s treasure! Your agency may not make too much money doing this, but the planet will be a slightly better place and that’s always a good thing.
Share your eco-friendly practices with clients, partners, and peers. Raise awareness and lead by example! It’s a brilliant way of showing how easy it is to transform a business into an energy-efficient, planet-friendly powerhouse.
Start reducing your carbon footprint with Nimbus.
Start reducing your agency’s carbon footprint with a green hosting plan from Nimbus. Whether you need reseller hosting, a dedicated server or managed VPS hosting, we have it all right here.
To learn more about our hosting plans or to book a platform tour, please get in touch with our sales team and take the first step to making your agency green.
Remember, every click, swipe, and scroll counts. By making mindful choices in our digital lives, we can all do our part in reducing our carbon footprint. So, let’s band together and make the internet a cleaner, greener place for generations to come!
