Top 20 Ways for Web Developers to Reduce Their Carbon Footprint
Climate change is greatly affected by our carbon footprint. As web developers, it may not seem that we make huge “footprints.” We read our mail and news online (no paper), communicate with instant messenger and Skype (no stamps or letters), and many of us relax by watching video or TV shows online (no renting/buying physical DVDs). As a whole, web developers do a pretty good job reducing their carbon footprint.
Yet there are plenty of ways that we can reduce our carbon footprints even further and treat Mother Nature a bit better. After all, every little bit helps when it comes to becoming more environmentally responsible.
So here are the top twenty ways that web developers can reduce their carbon footprint each day. They’re simple changes, but in the end they make a huge difference.
This post is part of Blog Action Day 2009, a worldwide initiative started by Envato founders Collis and Cyan Ta’eed, now being run by Change.org. Blog Action Day exists to change the conversation on the web for one day by uniting thousands of bloggers around one important issue – this year, Climate Change. It’s not too late to register your blog and participate.
1. Turn Off the Computer
While this may be the most obvious solution, it has a huge impact. Many of us leave our computer running 24/7 because it’s convenient. Even if your computer is idle or “sleeping”, it still needs the battery. Consider completely shutting off the computer when you go to bed at night. While you’re at it, switch off the monitor and sound system if you’re using them as well.
2. Turn Off your External Hard Drives at Night
People run backups at night because they don’t want to use computing resources when they’re actually on the computer. However, backup systems have matured considerably in the past few years, and often times a backup can go unnoticed. I run Time Machine backups on my Mac at hourly intervals and hardly ever notice any real resource consumption.
If you’re backing up your hard drives at consistent intervals during the day, you probably don’t need to run backups when you’re asleep as well.
2. Use Eco-friendly Light Bulbs
Energy Star qualified CFL light bulbs use 75 percent less energy than the standard incandescent light bulb and last ten times longer. Start powering your home office (and rest of the house) with eco-friendly light bulbs. It’s estimated each light bulb can also save $30 per lightbulb.
3. Use a Green Web Host
There are plenty of interesting green initiatives happening in the hosting industry. Some hosts are planting a tree for each account, others use alternate energy sources to power their servers. Here’s a list of eco-friendly web hosts and how they’re doing their part to reduce carbon footprints.
4. Switch to Hibernate when Inactive
Allowing your computer to hibernate or sleep when it’s inactive helps save resources and energy. Sleep uses a small amount of power to maintain the memory. Hibernate completely powers down the system and saves your settings on the hard disk. Sleep doesn’t save as much energy, but it allows your computer to “wake” faster than hibernate. Either way, using a power-saving state can reduce usage of unneeded power.
Microsoft has a great article on the differences between sleep and hibernate, and which situations to use them.
5. Switch to Linux-powered Computers
Did you know that Linux computers can save e-waste levels by 50%? There was a study done in 2004 that reported definite green benefits to running Linux-powered computers. The main reason: Windows systems had to change hardware every 3-4 years, where Linux systems only needed hardware refreshes every 6-8 years. (source)
While the study is five years old (an eternity in technology years), it still leaves something to consider the next time you purchase a computer.
6. Use Blackle
Heap Media created Blackle, an eco-friendly Google search engine. Based on the theory that a black Google could save 750 Megawatt-hours a year, Blackle is just that. It’s identical to the real Google with an energy-saving black color scheme. The monitor uses more resources to display white or light screens as opposed to black or dark screens, so the makers of Blackle may be on to something.
7. Switch to LCD
If you’re still using that old, clunky CRT monitor, consider switching to a more environmentally-friendly LCD monitor. CRT monitors require more energy and create more heat than LCD. Besides, what web developer or designer needs an excuse to upgrade their monitor?
8. Work from Home
If you can swing it, working from home makes a considerable dent on your carbon footprint. Driving to work uses fossil fuels, and even the bus system uses fossil fuels as well (though not as much as a car). Plus, if you work in an office space, there’s another building that has to be heated (or cooled) and lighted.
9. Increase the Life of your Computer
The longer your computer lasts, the less resources you have to consume buying a new one. Routinely checkup and run maintenance to ensure a long and happy life for your computer.
10. Manage your Bills Online
Many web developers already receive their bills online, but if you don’t you definitely should. Think about your office trash can and what makes up the major part of the bulk: mail. Junk mail, bills and more junk mail. While the junk mail is kind of hard to stop, receiving bills online can save quite a bit of paper usage. Try to get all of your bills and newsletters in a digital format and save a few trees in the process.
11. Use an Eco-friendly Font
I had to blink a few times to believe it, but there is actually an eco-friendly font that saves on average 20% more ink than other fonts. The makers of Ecofont remove small parts of the letter in order save ink. The parts that are removed are hardly noticeable in print. Ingenious.
12. Rely on Natural Lighting
Natural lighting is better than a lightbulb any day, and can add some warmth to the room as well. Open up those blinds and turn off those overhead lights. You’ll have to be careful where you position your computer to make sure there isn’t a glare on the monitor, but nothing beats a soft, natural light to fill your workspace.
13. Don’t use a Screensaver
Screensavers were initially created to add life to the monitor by keeping phosphors from burning images into an idle monitor. But modern computers don’t have these problems, and screensavers are now just a way to personalize your computer. Screensavers still use power, and can even keep your computer from going into a fully-saving power mode.
14. Turn off the Coffee Maker
For those of us that drink coffee, there’s an easy way to save energy: turning off the coffee maker. Turn off the warmer when you’re done drinking coffee. Oftentimes laziness keeps us from actually switching off the pot when we’re finished, and the coffee maker needlessly heats the coffee for hours afterwards. Not only will you save energy, you’ll also save your nostrils from the smell of stale coffee burning on the warming plate. Gross.
15. Put on a Sweater
For each degree you lower your heat, you’ll save up to 5% in heating costs. So consider dropping the thermostat a couple degrees and putting on a sweater. You’ll save money on your heating bill and use less energy and resources in the process.
16. Cut Back on Phantom Power
Phantom power is energy that’s wasted by appliances plugged in and using small bits of power while they’re not being used. You can use a smart powerstrip that cuts the power when the appliance is off, unplug things when you’re done with them, and use devices like the Kill A Watt to monitor energy consumption.
Learn how to reduce phantom power at Treehugger.
17. Make your Sites Printer-friendly
While most of us web ninjas laugh at the prospect of printing a web site, many people still do. If you don’t have a printer-friendly version available on all pages, this means that everything on the page is printed, using needless ink on things like design colors and images.
Fortunately, it’s pretty simple to add printer-friendly versions of sites. Many modern designs have a separate print stylesheet for printer pages, like so:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="print.css" media="print" />
You’ll notice the media=”print” is where the magic happens. About.com has an excellent article on what a print-friendly stylesheet needs to have.
18. Say NO to Styrofoam
If you work in an office, bring your own cup for your coffee instead of using the styrofoam cups. Styrofoam is awful on the environment, mainly because it doesn’t decompose like other materials. Even if you recycle the styrofoam, the process takes a very long time and is difficult. Also, styrofoam contains chlorofluorocarbons (CFC’s) which hurts the ozone.
In short: styrofoam should be avoided as much as possible. Besides, doesn’t a real coffee mug feel so much better in your hands?
19. Add a Plant (or two)
Plants can make a huge difference in a home or office. Aside from the health benefits, plants can improve air quality considerably. A company in New Dehli did a study and added 3 different types of plants to their office building, and found that they could literally “grow their own air”. The plants reduced eye irritation, headaches, lung issues, and respiratory system incidents considerably over the course of 15 years. The company also saved energy costs by around 15% thanks to the plants.
20. Use the Library
Instead of buying copies of paper books, check them out at your local library. Most libraries are hooked into an inter-library loan system, so you can find almost any book from your library. How often do you reread all of your books? If you’re like me, not very often. Most books are only read once (if at all), and typically just sit on a shelf for show. Instead, show your intelligence by saving paper instead of a filling a bookcase.
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This article is BAD.
Huh… Well not to be negative but this article seems a waste of time. Anyone who is mildly energy conscious would know almost all, if not all, of this stuff.
Also, a lot of sites would never get printed… So.. yeah
Oh and global warming is a bunch of crap (in the last couple years the avg. temperatures have reverted to the point they were at 100 years ago), not that that should keep us from being energy conscious or anything, since you can you know save money and everything.
So how do you explain the shrinking polar ice cap?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8307272.stm
Have you ever heard of the ice age? Well, there was a brief warming period before it that helped melt the polar ice caps. Animals had nothing to do with it, it’s just something the Earth does from time to time. We’re actually pretty close to the next one.
Natural fluctuation in temperature, we haven’t been monitoring temperature for very long, so who can say that there isn’t a few hundred year warming and cooling period…Also a single solar burp from the sun can alter the temperature on Earth. A volcanic eruption releases more stuff into the air than all the man made pollution.
Is It only me that finds it weird that envato advertises to go green.. yet all of theeir sites are white? Maybe a go green dark design?
On CRT’s, Black uses roughly the same amount of power as white, from my tests. Black uses the most power on LCD’s since black requires all the crystals on the monitor to block all light.
This article shouldn’t of even made its way too this website!
Whoever put this on here, please remove it, I anit certainly going to do anything, if this planet dies, it dies.
:(
too bad there is no man made global warming
Hell, why not make all web pages black, with black font. People can just highlight something if they want to read it.
Answer: Because it’s poor design.
Eco-friendly font? Whole Foods wouldn’t even print that.
Also, I propose we keep our computers turned off until the last possible moment.
Complete your design on an etch-a-sketch and only power on your computer when it’s time to turn it into a PSD.
Again, Black = BAD
Black uses the most amount of power on modern computer monitors.
but it uses the least amount of energy on plasma screens and the difference in plasma screens is a lot bigger than in tft screens.
A welcome change with a little food for thought too. Thanks.
I cannot believe there is an eco-friendly font! Wow, what will people come up with next?
Only visit NetTuts once in a while to save some Eco-Visits.
http://www.eco4planet.com
Another great initiative
To be even more Eco-friendly you can stop writing dumb tuts like this that waste everyone’s time..lol
How about we stop screwing around and fire up the freaking Nuclear power plants instead of putting up these eye soar windmills?
Being environmentally conscious is fine, but the extreme environmentalist are the new robber baron’s (Al Gore) making money on our collective over reactive nature.
Tut’s Please stay out of politics and useless movements and stick to what you do best.
I always find it funny that people think those windmills are an eye soar, I love them, I think they are a beautiful piece of engineering.
Wow… our topic not only for web development but also enviroment that relate for the web :)
Nice…!
The general power saving ideas are mostly valid. However some of these suggestions are pretty questionable.
Power benefits from Linux computers based on needing to upgrade less often? Silly.
Encouraging the use of a black background Google while using a white background on your own site? Fail.
Are there are IT people who don’t manage most of their bills online? Sad.
Each degree you lower your heat saves up to 5% in heating costs? Uh huh.
Apparently I’m more eco-friendly than most people – I don’t drink coffee. That covers 10% of these suggestions right there.
Again, I just have to emphasize how incredibly stupid this article is. I’m not going to choose sides on the debate, for the scope of this post, it doesn’t matter, this is what I have a problem with:
5. Switch to Linux-powered Computers:
Because they update less? This is absolutely stupid. The reason people trash computers for new ones is not because their hardware is not “good” enough for a new OS, it’s because a normal person will choose to buy a new computer every 3 – 5 years. It’s one of those plans that normal people/families have. It has nothing to do with the Operating System.
Proof? XP has been around for nearly a decade. Don’t tell me that Windows requires people to upgrade their PC every couple of years. My 7 year old HP with a 1.8GHz P4 (single core) runs XP JUST FINE with 256MB RAM.
6. Use Blackle
Google ran a black web page for ONE DAY. The reason they didn’t stick with it is because they KNEW that black screens would consume TOO MUCH POWER. The majority of users have LCD screens, which would need the crystals to block all light, causing the monitor to use even more power.
Use Blackle, you will use MORE energy than if you used Google.
Capped for emphasis.
7. Switch to LCD
Nothing wrong with switching to LCD, but since you mentioned it with BLACKLE, it’s a contradiction of itself. LCD’s use more power displaying black than white.
20. Use the Library
The worst thing you could do is try to emphasize the market of paper. You should have said…
20. Use an E-Book Reader and a service such as Amazon.
It takes a lot of power to create paper, and one of the best things you can do is to ditch it altogether. The library is great, but the best it will do is save you money.
I just installed vista on my laptop and I’m wanting a desktop even faster because my system just doesn’t seem all that stable right now, so I wouldn’t talk so fast. =P
You made a point without making a point.
I fail to understand what you just said. If you’re saying “Linux is more stable than Vista”. One, your hardware sucks. Two, be careful of which Linux distro you’re talking about. I’ll have sound one day, and not have it the next. My hardware doesn’t suck, it just that infighting is a constant battle in GNU/Linux, and leaves many computers hurting in the process.
To celebrate the stupidity of the environmentalists, I’ll reduce my carbon footprint by unsubscribing from this blog.
If that’ll make you feel like a big boy, feel free! :)
Jeffrey, seriously, you’re a cool guy. I really respect you as a very smart guy, and a good editor. But, please, take heed of many of the comments. There are points within the article that are inaccurate by a bit, such as the LCD one (when people should be buying LED’s, not LCD’s), or ones that are incredibly polar opposite of what it claims, such as Blackely, which will cause MORE damage in the long run than those using Google. The claims from sites such as Blackle are false, at best. I’ll give them the BOTD and assume that they are talking about LED’s or CRT’s, but the majority of people have LCD’s, and they will use more power per pixel than those displaying white, which use almost no power per pixel.
Bit silly to suggest all of that and ignore the consequences of developers’ work – how much greenery is in danger from lazy attitudes to caching, gzipping, minifying and trimming your sites’ contents down to the bare minimum? How many electrons and photons are wasted sending duplicate files round the tubez because noone bothered to check once the site was “working”?
Besides that, global warming is bad science based on shonky measurements, props from scientists who aren’t climatologists and supported whole-heartedly by politicians once they realised it was an excuse to raise taxes and energy prices – it’s about as believable a threat as witchcraft, communism, WMDs and global terrorism.
????
So you’re saying that politicians affect the price of gas? Because evidence says otherwise. Also EVIDENCE that is believable DOES point to man-made global warming. However I’ll rely on the experts rather than Nick Tulett to make it as definitive is possible. Fortunately, real scientists all over the world, have a passion for figuring out what is happening in climate change and why. I’d safely say the majority are not politically motivated, just like your political leanings don’t make you a web developer / tester. Your interests do.
Witchcraft – I agree, no evidence for that.
WMD’s. They do exist. Western powers have sold enough of them to developing countries too have some concerns over them too.
Global Terrorism: Well we know terrorists exist, we know many forms of terrorism takes place nearly all over the world unfortunately. Now the so-called “war on terror” is one I’d have to question the methods. But I’m on expert on it so I don’t make strong claims on that.
I do like your ideas on caching and zipping. I need to do that and I’ve been lazy on it.
I usually never comment here, but this is absolutely ridiculous to be on this site. I cannot believe this was even published here.
very good article, wise thinking!
So simple, yet so cool. Inspires me for sure! Thanks for posting this thing (even when I’m a bit late discovering it).
Love to see more of this stuff!
It’s interesting how we both picked exactly the same thing to look at for Blog Action Day 2009, yet both came up with completely different points.
oh my god. point 20 is the most stupid thing i have ever read.
Why? Unless maybe like me you have tourettes and live about 30 miles from your nearest Library. In which case, yes it would be daft, as the petrol involved in getting there and back would be silly and then I would probably only get chucked out! But if you lived nearer then why not? I think people have forgotten all about Libraries in the new digital era. I used to love going to the library as a kid.
You guys must have missed business 101… never EVER talk about religion or politics with business associates – especially clients.
If I was running this place, I’d take this post down immediately. It has already tarnished Tutsplus reputation with numerous viewers here who have commented, not to mention the ones who took a look at this post and may have completely written you off entirely…
I think you make some valid points that we all forget about sometimes, I know I often leave my mac running for days. Some are a bit silly like the ecofont, that made me laugh. :) but hey you still managed to find 20 things so good on you.
I have read all the comments as I did wonder how a post like this would go down. I think overall people have been fairly accepting. Considering how often this blog is updated, if there is on occasion something that is not of interest to me I would just not read it. And besides its not like you guys chose that Blog Action day should be about Climate Change.
So I say good on you for getting involved. :)
Great set of tips, I was surprised by the eco-fonts!
Lame article
DAMN a lot of posts, and what I think is a very important information can’t get enough exposure :( Well, here it is:
Carbon footprint does not cause the global warming. The sun causes it, NASA researchers say. They observed that on other planets of the solar system, where ice was present (like Mars), now the ice has partialy melted. Well, don’t know a link for this information, but google it and you may find something…
Second information, also scientific confirmed, just 1 big ship pollutes as much as 50 million cars http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/09/shipping-pollution
Nice article! I would invite all web developers to join Greenscroll – non-profit that greening the WEB.
NetTuts it’s taking everything I have to not unsubscribe from this blog. What does this have to do with web development? Maybe open a new blog to push the personal agendas: EnviroPlus
Great List :) Thanks
Instead of buying books, get the eBooks and read them from your Nook/Kindle.
Use a black deskop background.
Use Black backgrounds on websites.
I like my carbon footprint but thanks anyway
There are 2 #2′s?..
thanks a lots
I have been using Black Google Mobile at http://bGoog.com to get a better battery life on my smartphone and to reduce my data usage. On OLED based screens you can use over 4x less power having a black background instead of white! Blackle is not mobile friendly and does not work correctly on my phone as it has white search results. There is more information on this at http://bGoog.com/about