Your website is hurting the planet. Here's how to fix it.
Our curiosity about digital carbon consumption is rooted in a desire to do better.
In an unfortunate turn of events, the internet is killing the Earth.
That’s a direct statement that requires us to journey down a bit of a rabbit hole. Bear with us.
Global warming must be limited to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels to avoid the point of no return for climate change, according to the Paris Agreement.
Greenhouse gas emissions must peak before 2025 at the latest and decline 43% by 2030 to reach this limit.
Reaching this goal requires individuals and nations to operate within a “carbon budget;” obviously some nations are greedier with their carbon emissions than others.
As of 2024, online activity accounted for about 40% of the per capita carbon budget consistent with limiting global warming.
Also as of 2024, the average user spent more than 40% of their waking life (about 7 hours per day) streaming video and music, scrolling through social media and bopping about on websites. Twenty years ago, the average American spent 8 to 9 hours per week online.
More internet use = more carbon emissions = more difficulty reaching emissions goals = bad news for Earth. In practice, this is a much more complex issue. But in theory, it’s exactly this simple.
So why are we bringing this up? It’s not the best look for an agency that builds websites.
Our curiosity about digital carbon consumption is rooted in a desire to do better. A world without websites will never exist again. (Unless the asteroid hits, and then we’ll have bigger fish to fry). So, we need to understand how websites become more sustainable, and how we can realistically do our part to create change.
Why do websites have such a significant impact?
Storing, processing and transmitting the data that makes up websites gobbles up natural resources and belches back pollution. And as websites grow more sophisticated—tracking scripts, large images and video—they require more computing power, which requires more natural resources.
Data centers are the villain du jour in this story. They “compete for critical resources like water and land, and they can lower air quality and increase traffic, often while benefiting from changes to zoning laws and huge tax breaks,” writes Nicole Greenfield, an investigative reporter for Consumer Reports.
But they’re just one piece of the puzzle. We can’t forget about our old friend fossil fuels, which still generate nearly 60% of the electricity in the U.S. Renewable energy use is growing, accounting for about 24% of total U.S. utility-scale electricity generation in 2025, compared to 12% in 1990. But more electricity is produced via natural gas than ever before.
We’re not advocating for throwing our computers out the window and abandoning the internet entirely, tempting as it may sound. The internet was born as a tool for learning about our world and connecting people around the world, and it still serves that purpose. It opens up visibility and economic opportunities for small, nonprofit and historically marginalized businesses, many of whom are working to make a difference in the world.
We don’t want to stop the internet. We want to understand its impact and work to make it more sustainable. So, how can we lessen harm and create change?
Know your numbers
The big, abstract numbers and concepts we laid out earlier are like a blue whale, or a forest—they’re so large that it’s hard to break them down into meaningful details.
“It can feel overwhelming,” says Tim Frick, owner of Mightybytes, a sustainable web design agency. “Every industry is going through a reckoning right now of addressing circularity, tackling climate change in a meaningful, measurable way.”
Mightybytes developed its Ecograder tool to help organizations overcome the overwhelm and make sense of their site’s environmental impact. Here’s how it works:
Punch in any URL
Ecograder audits the site and issues a score based on performance, efficiency, and UX factors, as well as emissions estimates and green hosting powered by renewable energy.
The higher the score, the better you’re doing. Mightybytes’ site scores 92/100. TikTok scores a 32. Our own site scores a 51 (more on that later).
Ecograder recommends page changes to make the site more eco-friendly; users can then rescore their site to see improvements over time.
Frick and Mightybytes also recommend these tools for understanding your site’s impact.
Ember: Better understand electricity demand, generation, capacity, and CO2 data for your region with Ember’s Data Explorer.
Calculating Digital Emissions: Learn common formulas used to calculate and track digital emissions.
Cloud Carbon Footprint: This free, open source tool can help you better understand the climate impacts of common cloud-based hosts, such as Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure.
Make small changes on your website now
Your organization relies on outside vendors for a myriad of back-end tools that keep your front-end looking sharp and working great. But those third-party products or services—and your website—contribute to the proliferation of fossil fuels if they don’t use green web hosting.
Sustainable services can be tough to find, but they’re definitely out there. Among Frick’s suggestions: Research green web hosts for an option that meets your needs.
Optimizing your site’s performance can be a more straightforward way to decrease your carbon footprint. Check your Ecograder report for weak spots, then follow best practices for performance optimization. At many organizations, it’s as simple as better image compression—but you’ve gotta stick with it.
“It’s amazing to me how many clients we’ve trained and helped understand that a 5 MB image on a homepage is not the right thing to do,” Frick says. “They still do it on a regular basis.”
Talking about your web sustainability efforts creates both accountability and awareness. Many businesses that successfully optimize their environmental impact also see improved user experiences, quicker loading times, lower hosting costs and more. Environmental stewardship makes good business sense, and we need to shout it from the rooftops.
Regulate web sustainability
Legal and financial consequences are often the most effective tool for change when what’s right collides with what’s most profitable. The Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination against people with physical and mental disabilities, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which provide a roadmap for online accessibility, are two important modern examples.
But it takes time and work behind the scenes from often-unpaid experts to develop best practices that can then begin the process of becoming law. The ADA wasn’t enacted until 1990, which feels absolutely wild given its importance.
Right now, the Sustainable Web Interest Group is taking on the important work of developing best practices for digital sustainability. Frick is one of three group chairs, but dozens of individuals and a few large organizations including Google, Mozilla and Salesforce are contributing to the document that eventually will influence legislation: the Web Sustainability Guidelines.
Currently in draft work, the Guidelines organize and solidify best practices and potential requirements for web sustainability. Actionable categories include UX design; web development; hosting, infrastructure and systems; and business strategy and product management.
Like our aforementioned examples, the Guidelines have taken time. The Sustainable Web Interest Group formed in 2013 and started the draft document in 2021; the group aims to publish this summer.
Because the Guidelines are a living document, Frick says the group is always looking for folks with expertise to contribute in areas where the guidelines are missing info. “The most exciting part is that eventually these guidelines will influence legislation, which means they’ll collectively influence impact,” he says.
What about AI?
Bigmouth has plenty of opinions on AI, and we’ll continue to share them on our social accounts and with anyone who asks. AI is evolving so rapidly that it’s tough to keep up, and we certainly can’t count ourselves as experts. But we’re staying informed as best we can by reading up and engaging with our network.
Most AI tools out there are from big companies with lots of investment money, so there aren’t many smaller, more ethical or sustainable companies in the game. (We recommend checking out GreenPT and Ecosia.)
What Bigmouth is doing
We’re a bit embarrassed by our overall Ecograder score (51), but it also inspired us to take a closer look at areas for improvement. Turns out, our server hosting score (8), is dragging down our overall numbers, so we’re following our own advice and researching sustainable partners.
Most importantly, we’re staying in the conversation. Web sustainability has no finish line, only opportunities for continuous improvement. We’re grateful for trusted sources of information, like-minded partners like Tim Frick and Mightybytes and a growing appetite among our clients for websites that reflect their values—including sustainability.
Learn more about the Bigmouth website experience
By now you’re probably all fired up and ready to get rolling on your own website work. Here are three ways to get started:
Engage us for a branding workshop
Engage us for a branding workshop Bigmouth’s Brand Foundations Strategy Workshop is a great preview of the full Bigmouth experience without committing to a full website. In our interactive 60-minute workshop with the Bigmouth team, you’ll define your top three audiences and create personalized vision and positioning statements—decisions that can inform the direction of your website.
Team up to find your core values
Core values are the North Star that guide your internal process, recruiting and hiring decisions. They also shape the ways your organization shows up for its people, both internally and outwardly. Define your core values as a team — and apply them to the way you work together and for your community. Download our free guide.
Reach out to our team
We’d love to chat about how we can work together to refresh or redo your website! Send us a message and we’ll get back to you in a jiffy. Start the conversation.
Bigmouth’s website process has people talking. Check out our ranking in the DesignRush top Chicago branding agencies.
