How our website became sustainable
When we decided to change and focus on sustainable design solutions, which will benefit people and the planet, we knew we had to rethink our website and communication. In 2020, our colleagues teamed up to think about how to communicate the change, highlight our new focus, and build trust in our expertise. This exploration – so to say – took months and we realized; it’s impossible next to our daily job.
Shout out to Eunji, Minjoo, Andreas, Ivo, Karel, Anni, Andrea, Isabel x 2, Patric, Dominic, Sarah, Vichy, Stefanie (in random order, and many more) for contributing to the new website.
That’s why we searched for a suitable partner and luckily found wholegraindigital.com. They are a B Corp, residing in London, specialized in low-carbon WordPress sites, like-minded, and really nice people.
Shout out to Nick, Gary, Alex, Dan, and more for leveraging our ideas.
We worked with wholegrain on a complete brand refresh, as well as the design and development of our streamlined website, which now much more clearly represents our mission and ethos. The final design was stripped right back, to focus on the three main pillars of our work: Expertise, Impact, and Attitude.
>> From my experience with this project, it’s been a really smooth and rewarding few months. Being involved in the whole life-cycle of INDEED’s re-launch has been a breath of fresh air. <<
Alex Hughes
Pushing the boundaries of sustainable web design
Sustainable web design can sometimes have a bad reputation as being plain and boring. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Through mindful content choices, smart design ideas, and intelligent code, it is possible to create dynamic website experiences on a low carbon budget.
0.47g CO2 per page view
99% Performance
1.8s Page load time
One example of our collaboration with wholegrain is the ‘horizontal scroll’. It’s a technique whereby, as the user scrolls down, certain parts of the page scroll horizontally. This allows us to disrupt the normal flow and tell an immersive, content-rich story.
A component used by IBM on their ‘Urgency of Science’ landing page inspired us for this feature. Unfortunately, the effect or function has a horrible environmental footprint. Thankfully, wholegrain created a similar effect, but with minimal script and big cross-browser support.
Dan, the Senior WordPress Developer on this project, achieved a 67% (1.45g) reduction in carbon emissions compared to the IBM reference. This is a testament to the fact that it is more than possible to create strong, movement-based websites without burning more than a gram of CO2 per page view.
A first assessment of our new website shows massive improvements:
- We were 773% dirtier and evolved to be 70% cleaner than an average website.
- Unbelievable 27.67 g of CO2 was produced before the refresh of our site.
Now our users only produce 0.94 g of CO2 every time they visit our website. - We switched the hosting provider and are now running fully on sustainable energy.
Test your own site and get full results at websitecarbon.com
Why is all this important?
The digital space is a massive source for CO2 in our information society. “The carbon footprint of our gadgets, the internet and the systems supporting them account for about 3.7% of global greenhouse emissions […]. It is similar to the amount produced by the airline industry globally […]. And these emissions are predicted to double by 2025.” (Source: BBC)
Therefore, making our website easier and less dirty for our users to navigate is an obligation not a choice.
