Let’s be real: Most people don’t think about carbon emissions when they launch a new website. They’re thinking about the design, the user experience, the messaging, the features and functionality. But if you have a site that gets a lot of visits and it loads slowly, uses bloated scripts, or autoplays video, you're quietly increasing your organization's carbon footprint with every click.

We talked about this recently at NTEN’s Nonprofit Technology Conference, and we’re going to keep talking about it, because it matters.

Digital ≠ Clean

Your website lives in “the cloud,” but as you know, the cloud is nothing wispy. It’s really just a nightmare vision of big, windowless buildings full of energy-hungry data centers, and much of that energy still comes from burning fossil fuels. Multiply one inefficient page by tens of thousands of visits a month, and you’re looking at the emissions equivalent of air travel. 

We’ve seen websites produce over 6,000 tons of CO₂ annually just from page loads. If your organization talks about sustainability in any form, that’s a disconnect worth correcting.

What You Can Do (Today)

You don’t have to rebuild from scratch. Here are the three biggest levers you can pull:

1. Design & Tech Optimizations

• Compress your images. This is a big one!
• Use lazy loading so images only display when needed.
• Ditch unused scripts. Just because your dev added a carousel plugin in 2017 doesn’t mean it needs to live forever.
• Use simpler fonts and solid backgrounds. It is true that less eye candy, more performance.
• Cache your pages like you mean it.

2. Rethink Your Content

• Don’t autoplay videos or host them yourself — use YouTube or Vimeo. They are really good at optimizing this content.
• Cut unnecessary graphics and favor SVGs for clean, scalable visuals.
• Ask yourself: Does this animation actually help, or is it just cool?

3. Get on Green Hosting

Find a hosting provider that’s upfront about its energy use, offsets its carbon, and ideally, powers its servers with renewables. Transparency and measurable progress are key here. A few good options as of early 2025 are:

• Platform.sh: They’re a B Corp (like us!) with a goal of reducing their greenhouse gases by 30% (from 2022 to 2030).
• WP Engine: This company is committed to sustainability. They partner with Google Cloud's carbon-neutral infrastructure.
• Kualo: They’re 100% renewable-powered with certified green credentials.

Proof It Works

We helped Lawrence Berkeley National Lab shave 1.44 tons of CO₂ a year off their site just by reducing file sizes and optimizing performance, without sacrificing traffic. In fact, their visits went up by 20%.

The same thing happened recently with a recent client who saw a 21.5% emissions reduction and improved UX. These aren’t theoretical improvements. They’re results from real sites we’ve built.

It’s Not About Being Perfect

This is worth repeating: you’re not going to nail everything on day one. Sustainability is a practice, not a checkbox. The point isn’t to gut your site or strip it down to text on a white background. It’s to be intentional. Start asking different questions—ones like: “Could this page be lighter?” “Does this element serve the user or just us?” “What are we optimizing for?”

If we’re honest, we have a little shame about our own site. We don’t get a ton of hits, but we can always be better. It’s a challenge, as a creative agency, not to have big and beautiful images and videos. But we’re always working to make things better. 

Where to Start

• Audit your current site: Use tools like WebsiteCarbon.com and Google Lighthouse.
• Talk to your dev: A lot of these changes are low-effort fixes with high impact.
• Read your host’s sustainability report: If they don’t have one, that’s a flag.
• Set a goal: Even a modest reduction target is a great place to begin.

Small Changes, Big Impact

You don’t need a sustainability department to make your website greener. You just need to care enough to act — and partner with folks who care, too. (That’s us)

Let’s build smarter. The planet will thank you, and so will your users.