10 Tips for Being a Greener Web Designer

[Tyssen]

Notice: This is a discussion thread for comments about the SitePoint article, 10 Tips for Being a Greener Web Designer.
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You can carbon offset your website.

[ssttoo]

Nice article! Some more suggestions:

11. print on both sides of the paper (or choose not to print when possible)
12. [blatant self-promotion] Run YSlow on your website - when you implement its suggestions you'll have more cached files, less bandwidth because of minifying, gzipping, etc, so your hosting provider can turn off a few servers

"Not only is natural light free, but it also contains Vitamin E—absorb away!" I think you mean Vitamin D. Also you're unlikely to absorb much of it through your windows.

[mattymcg]

Originally Posted by duncan

"Not only is natural light free, but it also contains Vitamin E—absorb away!" I think you mean Vitamin D. Also you're unlikely to absorb much of it through your windows.

Ha ha, of course you are correct. Fixed.

Vitamin E is good for you too. I bought some as a vitamin supplement the other day, which I suppose is how it made its way into the article by mistake.

Thanks duncan!

[mattymcg]

Originally Posted by Tyssen

You can carbon offset your website.

That's true, you can. I suppose I steered clear of that as a tip for "being more green" given it doesn't really reduce your carbon emissions, especially because some carbon offset programs are more, erm, questionable, than others as to the impact that they have.

But a worthy inclusion nonetheless. Just do your homework when researching carbon offset programs!

[SSJ]

Amazing Article. The most beautiful tips I have ever seen. Thanks for share !

Don't use the printer for every peace of digital information you got. I now there are some designers as fast they got a brief for a project you don't always need to print this information. Use your laptop to read it.

[banago]

Great article, I just loved that. Thanks!

I have recently been looking to switch to a green hosting company. But finding one that isn't just using carbon-offsetting is hard.

Ideally it is the whole company ethos that you have to look at - do they encourage their employees to cycle/bus to work, do their offices use green energy and of course are the servers low energy. To find a carbon neutral company would be great, but any hosting company who is truly aiming for it is worth using too.

If anyone has any recommendations for green hosting then I would love to know.

[TheOriginalH]

Simple, succinct but enormously worthwhile article - thanks Matthew. Take heed all!

[Pacifer]

What a lovely and unexpected article. Thanks!

[Outer Orbit]

Excellent topic.

Could do with some links to companies that are already providing these services.

Just a thought though I would hold on to that monitor until it expires as the real cost of monitors is not realised by the consumer ie the cost of mining, metal pollution transport etc.

On the web development side perhaps optimizing multimedia would be another option.

Also do you need all those peripherals plugged in all the time.

I think the biggest issue of all though is hardware obsolescence.

End of life and second life for hardware?

[Outer Orbit]

Originally Posted by mingomango

If anyone has any recommendations for green hosting then I would love to know.

There is one company that offers 'fanatical support' now uses green energy. I don't have enough posts under my belt.

Though given how fanatical they are supposed to be I am not sure what they charge.

I'd like to know how much impact would be made by reducing file sizes and making pages more lightweight. If more sites had pages that were 40k instead of 150k, or 300k or 500k, what kind of difference would that make in the aggregate?

Plant 10 trees a year.
I read that if everyone planted 10 trees a year they would offset what they used. There are non-profit organizations that offer this service. If your business doesn't already have a "casual day - for some amount you can wear your jeans to work", set one up and donate part of the money to sponsoring tree planting in your business' name.

Two points..

1: sunlight does not contain Vitamin-D... our skin reacts with photons (that is, all light) to create vit-D .. sunlight is usually a lot brighter (candela) than a tungsten bulb and each photon has a higher energy.

2: planting trees does almost nothing to offset your carbon - new trees do suck up carbon for a while, but after a few years of growth they become zero-emmision (ie, they don't take any more carbon out or put it back in). When these trees die, the carbon is once again emitted, so it is at best a stop-gap.

[dannyj]

Ok, Nice but I don't want environmental advice in a design article.

[mauteri]

don't print out emails if you don't have to. that's another good one...

[mansdell]

Thanks for a thoughtful and helpful article.

On items 3 and 4 (replacing PCs and screens) it's worth remembering that
# much of the environmental impact of computer kit is in its manufacture and ultimate disposal.
Keeping kit running for its full life can be better overall than replacing it to reduce power use.
# Whilst many portables are, indeed, more energy efficient than non-portables it can be easier to
upgrade and repair non-portable PCs (especially the keyboard :-) -- but if you need a portable anyway
then just having one computer is a saving for both environmental 'current' and 'capital' costs.

As an aside, the link to sustainabilityblog.org in section 10 when the article was included in Design View #47 contains a typo.

What in the world has gotten in to SitePoint? I don't subscribe to the hysteria of "global warming," concocted by scientists for their research grants and socialists who hate capitalism.

I want articles about design, not naive articles about how to solve an unproven problem.

Web designers can design sites that primarily contain black backgrounds with light text. this way monitor's don't need to light the entire screen.

[TheOriginalH]

Originally Posted by dannyj

Ok, Nice but I don't want environmental advice in a design article.

Forum Index > Manage Your Site > Business and Legal Issues > 10 Tips for Being a Greener Web Designer

or

Home » Sell Your Services » Work Smarter » 10 Tips for Being a Greener Web Designer

take your pick, neither relates to "design articles".

As a "business article", this has huge relevance. I and many like me are far more likely to employ the services of someone actually taking a responsible position in relation to climate change.... so it makes good business sense to do so (and shout about it).

...ignoring the fact that the article is relevant to everyone on the planet....

What in the world has gotten in to SitePoint? I don't subscribe to the hysteria of "global warming," concocted by scientists for their research grants and socialists who hate capitalism.

I want articles about design, not naive articles about how to solve an unproven problem.

It shocks both me and my friend Elvis that people like you actually exist. However, taking an objective view, 70% of the points in the article will also lead directly to lower overheads, and in turn (if you chose to apply the savings that way), a higher return. Thus hopefully being in keeping with what should rightly be the brutally capilalist mandate of Sitepoint, n'est pas?

[longneck]

Originally Posted by RickP

Web designers can design sites that primarily contain black backgrounds with light text. this way monitor's don't need to light the entire screen.

that won't work.

on LCD monitors, the pixels are like little shutters that can be opened a variable amount. the light actually comes from a fluorescent tube or a series of LED's along the sides of the screen. the amount of power needed to change a pixel (open or close a shutter) is minuscule compared to the power to run the backlighting.

on a tube monitor, the pixels are generated by an electron gun aimed at the screen that is deflected (aimed) by a magnetic field. the power need to fire the electron gun is proportional to the intensity of the pixels, but the deflection side of things take a constant amount of power. on a modern tube monitor, better than 75% of the power is used to deflect the electron beam rather than generating the electron beam. this has been the case since 1985 or so when a radical improvement in phosphor formulations made them more sensitive to the electron beam, reducing the power requirements.

[Matt Mickiewicz]

I'll add one more tip: recylce or donate your old electronics. There's several companies such as the computer recylcing center (CRC.org) that specialize in this, and even computer companies like Dell offer recycling programs: http://www.dell.com/content/topics/s...=19&l=en&s=dhs

[aryandelhi]

I think this guy doesn't have any design article.