Image description: The above image is a vintage poster, rich with many colors, that advertises the 1932 Summer Olympic Games that took place in Los Angeles, California. The background of the photo is a blue/gray color with the texture of crumpled paper. In front and center of the photo is a muscular White man, with white/blonde hair in a white, sleeveless unitard and sneakers. The man has a green wreath around his arms, which are stretched into the air, with his right arm up, his left arm level with his hips. He holds the wreath directly in both hands while it drapes across his shoulders. His face is looking up and he appears to be shouting, perhaps in victory.
This citation and the sharing of this image were made possible with Creative Commons. Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that provides copyright licenses for free to allow for the easy and legal sharing of images like the one posted above.
As we learn and grow as a community, I find it important to share with you all the knowledge I gain. Universal design is essentially the creation of “something” so that it can be accessed by all. The idea provides the same opportunities to those with disabilities to participate in websites for example, without any special or specific adaptations or workarounds.
When we think about the internet, it’s common not to associate it with something that needs a physical infrastructure, right? Wrong!
Although we often think of the internet as something that solely exists in a virtual space, it actually depends on a massive amount of physical infrastructure.The internet consumes energy the same way powering the lights in your house does. You may not realize it, but even the computer or phone you’re using to read this contributes to that energy use and, in turn, to the carbon footprint left on Earth. With every Google search, post to social media, email, or visit to a website requires electricity to function!
Don’t feel guilty! Everyone has a part in this and we can work together to move forward in a positive way.
“4.6 billion people use the internet every day. In fact, 350,000 tweets have been sent in the past minute.”
Kettle, J. (2021, June 9). The internet consumes extraordinary amounts of energy. Here’s how we can make it more sustainable. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/the-internet-consumes-extraordinary-amounts-of-energy-heres-how-we-can-make-it-more-sustainable-160639
That amount of internet traffic in just the past minute is mind-blowing! Now think about how many times you’ve checked social media, listened to music, shopped online, or even come to this website for this article.
Now imagine billions of people across the globe doing the exact. same. thing.
According to the same article, “Research estimates that by 2025, the IT industry could use 20% of all electricity produced and emit up to 5.5% of the world’s carbon emissions”(Kettle, 2021). Most of the energy that contributes to the IT industry, and makes these statistics possible, comes from data centers. Data centers are where data and computer hardware are stored. In most, if not all cases, these data centers are hooked right into local electrical grids. These large centers are only getting larger in order to withstand more storage. As they do this, the carbon-footprint being made increases.
The internet might feel invisible, but the energy required to keep it running is very real.
Don’t fret! Change is happening
Although seeing these numbers can be staggering, many of the larger consumers are working to lower their environmental impact and, in turn, reduce their energy bills. This is great news for the environment moving forward, “Google have announced their goal to achieve 24/7 renewable energy-powered data centres by 2030, and their first such data centre became operational last year near Las Vegas”(Kettle, 2021). If Google is making the effort to reduce their non-renewable energy consumption, we can assume many of the other organizations like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft will commit to doing the same. While the demand for these data centers grow, so does the need for sustainable energy alternatives.
Sustainable Energy Alternatives
Solar
Water
Windturbines
It should bring you a great sense of comfort to know that many of the larger-name organizations that have been mentioned in this post are working towards incorporating these sustainable energy sources into their data centers.
What about us?
Well, we’ve spoken about big corporations, data centers, and the billions of internet users. But how does this impact our website?
We used Website Carbon to help us assess the environmental impact of our own page. Here’s what we found:
We are extremely happy to announce that according to websitecarbon.com, less than 0.01grams of CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) is produced every time someone visits our page (Wholegrain Digital, n.d.)! In a world full of high carbon emissions, it brought us immense joy to know our site isn’t contributing to the damage in a major way. With that being said, we want to make you aware of the carbon emissions generated by visiting other websites.
The “Other Guys” (Kettle, 2021)
The Conversation- each user generated 1.3g of CO2 by logging onto the site.
Google- generates ~ 0.2g of CO2 per visit
DailyMail- 54.0g of CO2 per visit
You may be wondering why each of these numbers is different. Why would one website produce more Carbon Dioxide than others?
Not every website is built and created the same way, causing a variation in the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by each visit. Some webpages can contain large images, videos, animations, advertisements, interactive features, and other media forms. These elements all require data to be transferred from a server directly to your device. The more data that needs to be sent to your device, the more energy required to do so.
Where do we draw the line?
We need to be realistic when demanding change. Many of the organizations that run these websites are aware that the more involved, animated, or picture-heavy their site is, the more carbon dioxide it will generate per visit. However, if websites committed to making their sites have a more minimalistic approach, the engagement overall would significantly decrease. Many organizations won’t remove everything from their website in order to reduce the carbon emissions because doing so would decrease traffic to their site and their whole goal is to have visitors.
The solution to this issue may not be to make every website completely minimalistic.
Instead, we need to work together to discover how websites could be designed in a more efficient way.
You may be wondering why our post on this topic is a little bland. We wanted to be conscious of the amount of media we included with this article to ensure, in light of this new research, that our Carbon emissions were extremely low.
It would be a bit silly for us to comment on CO2 emissions just to come here and add pictures, videos, and infographics, to cause a need for more energy! With that being said, we always encourage you to read on and involve yourself in more research. Please read the article that influenced this post and check the carbon emissions of your favorite sites using Website Carbon!
References
Kettle, J. (2021, June 9). The internet consumes extraordinary amounts of energy. Here’s how we can make it more sustainable. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/the-internet-consumes-extraordinary-amounts-of-energy-heres-how-we-can-make-it-more-sustainable-160639
Wholegrain Digital. (n.d.). Website Carbon Calculator | How is your website impacting the planet? Website Carbon Calculator. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://www.websitecarbon.com/
You may be thinking, why is she using WordPress and talking about whether or not it’s worth the hype? In my experience as a nontechnical person trying to create a website for the first time, WordPress has made my experience exponentially easier.
According to Elisabetta Adami, “In sum, WordPress.org presents itself as being made for and by everybody, contributing for free within and for an egalitarian diversified community, and free for uses ‘limited only by your imagination’”(2018, p. 607). Adami essentially critiques the idea of WordPress advertising as a site for all. They continue to discuss how the website allows theme creators to eventually move on to a board of creators, of sorts. This shows a clear community WordPress creates through its users. This further contributes to the advertising of WordPress being open source, the community contributes to the development of the site, i.e., the themes being created by users.
“WordPress lets users create a website that feels authentic to them while still looking aesthetic and professional, not low-budget.”
Bridget Cunningham- influenced by Adami, E. (2018). Styling the self online: Semiotic technologization in weblog publishing. Social Semiotics, 28(5), 601–622. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2018.1504713
As Adami further writes, when people think of a professional website, they now associate that with a clean, aesthetic look. WordPress tends to favor themes like, abstract, clean, elegant, and modern, to name a few. That aesthetic may fit for many of the users on here like business websites or professionals looking to establish a portfolio. However, that can come at the cost of the individuality of the user. The case study examined by Adami on pages 613-614 demonstrates how WordPress can help users achieve this clean-cut look. However, that may not always be what users desire depending on their target audience. In this case study, Adami discusses how the bloggers website and style had gone through a complete change. Although this may sound catastrophic to many users, the original blogger was an active participant in the clean up of the original blog. This demonstrates how WordPress still allowed her to self-style the website but follow what WordPress deems “desirable.”
With all this being considered, I find the aesthetic WordPress recommends helpful. My personality is loud and colorful, and because of that, I think I would get too carried away with decor, colors, and add-ons. All in all, I find that WordPress is extremely user-friendly and will continue to become more fruitful to me as I grow more comfortable with it and explore what it has to offer.
