We wanted to share our Impact Report with the world and get others excited about the changes taking place. However, sharing and transferring data is an energy intensive process. What would be the point of shouting about our good choices, if we made bad choices in the process?

By reducing the amount of data that needs to be transferred, we reduce the carbon footprint of the site. Some steps we've taken to reduce the site size are:

• Not using images, which are a common source of website bloat
• Powering all animations by code rather than video files, this reduces the size by a factor of over 5000
• Only using two typefaces

Eliminate server calls

Running server calls are another way websites can use energy. Our website is purely static, meaning no server calls are made when anyone visits the site, and a new version of the site is generated only when the content is updated.

Considerate hosting

The website uses a hosting provider with over 90 data centres around the world. This means that wherever you visit the site from, the data doesn't have to travel very far, which in turn reduces the amount of energy required to visit the site.

These data centres are run by Amazon and Google who are both financially incentivised to reduce the amount of energy they use (less energy, more profit) and have invented sophisticated cooling techniques. They both also have ambitious plans to use renewable energy sources and remove C02 from the environment.

On Demand PDFs

All of this means our site comes in at about 600 kb, whilst our PDF is 8.8MB. That means our website is about 16 times smaller. PDFs can be generated and downloaded from the site if people really want to get their hands on one, which means they’re only created by demand, and not just emailed over and left unread.