Take a look back in time just for a moment. The industrial revolution was a vital part of our history that has impacted us today. Revolutionary technologies and new industries were born during this time. Still, since the early part of the 20th century, we have learned a lot about energy consumption and its overall impact on the world. We have said goodbye to coal stack boilers that supplied vital energy to factories and replaced it with clean-burning solar or wind energy. Thankfully, the world is a lot happier because of our energy efforts and reducing personal and business carbon footprints. However, we continue to damage our environment without even realizing it.
There is an Internet Carbon Footprint
Starting your website is easier than ever before, and you can buy WordPress hosting with just a few strokes of your keyboard. Low-cost domain registration for your USA domain name is essential for your business website, but you should also be concerned about its carbon footprint. Remember, various clients will view your website throughout the world. If it is not environmentally friendly, you will be attributed to a lot of wasted energy when visitors come to your site.
What is the Actual Impact of Websites Today?
A recent study has concluded that internet sites account for 1 billion tons of greenhouse gasses emitted each year. Although that number can be shocking, it accounts for roughly 2% of all greenhouse gas emissions each year. Keep in mind that the total is worldwide, so 2% is a considerable impact on global and local economies. Another study concluded that the internet takes up approximately 10% of the world’s demand for energy. With energy consumption on the rise, that number is expected to climb to 20% by the year 2030, so even the minor changes spread out over the 1.5 billion websites worldwide can significantly impact the grand scale.
How Are Emissions Created on the Internet?
Every business owner should do their very best to incorporate environmentally friendly attributes throughout their company. This includes their website, and although it is difficult to grasp for some, WordPress web hosting services throughout the internet do have substantial carbon emissions. The carbon footprint of the internet can be attributed to a few sources.
Initially, to understand the carbon emissions internet use can have, you have to look at our devices. Currently, there are an estimated 6.378 billion smartphone users in the world. According to those numbers, 80.63% of the world’s population has a smartphone. This number does not include those with multiple devices such as tablets, personal computers, and those that use various smartphones for work and leisure time.
These devices are made every day, and during the manufacturing process, vast amounts of energy are used on production lines to make the devices access the internet. Once the devices are in the hands of consumers, even more energy is used to power the device and utilize all its various functions. Each user has a carbon footprint to contend with. When you realize the energy consumption of each action through your device, you can begin to understand the global impact various devices have on energy consumption. The individual websites and the fastest shared hosting WordPress sites have their own set of carbon emissions to contend with.
Examining The Environmental Impact of Just One Email
How many emails are sent each day? According to numbers in 2020, over 300.4 billion emails are sent daily. Each office sends, on average, 121 emails each day. Each email sent spends 1 gram of carbon emissions. That is about the weight of a paperclip that does not seem significant until you factor in the global number of daily emails.
What is a Business Owner to Do?
Striving to reduce your energy consumption is an applicable goal. We should all invest in ways to reduce energy consumption, and many have by remembering to turn off unused gadgets and devices and even using devices that use less power. However, the business owner must take it into their own hands to ensure they are doing their part for their physical store and online presence.
Having the best domain and web hosting services is a great start, but you can do more. Consider optimizing your site to be more environmentally friendly by reducing load time and optimizing images to load faster. You can also improve your visibility to ensure your customers do not waste precious energy trying to find your site. We all must live in the world, and the better we can take care of it, the more enjoyable our life can be. As a business owner, work to understand what energy consumption your website uses and how you can improve it.