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Written by Natalya Stanko   
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Thursday, 09 June 2011

Green Website

You are thinking about creating your own website, so how do you make it sustainable? The internet runs on energy, lots of it, and most of this is nonrenewable energy. As you read this, your computer is accessing and processing data, your monitor is displaying that data to you, and some far-away server is hosting all the files that comprise this website. All of these processes gobble up energy.
Of course, that doesn't mean you should avoid logging on. The Internet is a remarkable tool for sharing information and empowering each other. Sure, it uses energy, but so do brochures, books, stores, and phones (all of which the Internet is replacing). You shouldn't feel guilty about creating a website, but you should take steps to make your contribution to the worldwide web a little friendlier towards the real world. On that front, we are proud to say that www.greeniacs.com is hosted in a datacenter which runs on 100% renewable hydroelectric energy!

BENEFIT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT: Reduce energy usage, fossil fuel emissions, and deforestation . Increase awareness of environmental issues.

BENEFITS FOR YOUR USERS: They'll thank you. Green websites often run faster and look sleeker on top of being good for Mother Earth!

Time and effort: Medium

Cost: Medium. A green web hosting provider can cost more than a conventional provider.

Guidelines for Making Your Website Sustainable:
  1. Don't host your website on your friend's basement server. Shared hosting is much more energy efficient,1 not to mention much more reliable, especially if you scour the market for an environmentally friendly hosting provider. Green providers use renewable energy sources instead of petroleum and coal, offset their energy use with a carbon credit , and use servers optimized for energy efficiency. Some will even plant a tree for you. To find a provider, browse reviews at ecohostreviews.com.
  2. Update or design your website on a computer that's carbon neutral. Call up your utility company and ask if it provides energy from renewable resources, or install solar panels or wind turbines at your home or office.
  3. Neutralize the remainder of your carbon footprint, and in return get a web badge from CO2stats to show off your good environmental practices.
  4. Keep your site design simple to decrease its energy usage. Ditch unnecessary animations such as splash pages and animated ads. Post fewer images and lower their resolutions. Eliminate superfluous JavaScript and avoid Flash altogether. These steps will decrease load time and make the site easier to navigate, and your users will thank you for that.
  5. Integrate light colors and lots of white space into your design. Old CRT monitors require more energy to display lighter colors, but LCD monitors (which most people use today) require less.2
  6. Attract followers by going green. Commit to plant a tree for each subscriber. Either plant a native seed in your neighborhood, or pledge $1 for each tree to the Arbor Day Foundation.
  7. Make a version of your site that's suitable for handheld devices such as iPhones and Blackberries, which are more energy efficient than desktop computers. For starters, scale down all images and decrease the overall width of the site.
  8. Make a printer-friendly version of your site content to save your readers paper, ink, and energy. Remove graphics, color, ads, and navigation items. Remind your visitors to print only when necessary.
  9. Take advantage of special deals. Are you a blogger? Post Brighter Planet's badge on your blog, and they'll offset 350 pounds of carbon in your name, for free! According to Brighter Planet, “That's like flicking off 100 lightbulbs for a day. Or going two full weeks without your car!”
  10. Include environmentally friendly content on your site. Are you blogging? Write occasional posts about environmental topics that interest you. Are you selling a product? Make sure that product is eco-friendly, and relay its eco-cred to your customers.
Don't feel pressure to heed all of the above advice. You might not yet have the funds to install solar panels or the experience to tailor your site for handheld devices. Be realistic. Creating a website is already more environmentally friendly than printing thousands of brochures or setting up a brick-and-mortar storefront to sell your products. The best thing about a website is that, unlike a billboard or book, it's ever-changing. Even if you don't get everything right the first time around (and you won't), you can always tweak your site to make it more user-friendly, more beautiful, and more green—preferably light green!

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1 http://www.grist.org/article/2009-04-22-umbra-advises-web-hosting
2 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-black-is




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Last Updated ( Thursday, 09 June 2011 )

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Green Facts

  • Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.

  • In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.

  • Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.

  • Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.

  • Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.

  • Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.

  • Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

  • In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.

  • A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

  • The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.

  • Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

  • Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months

  • 77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.

  • Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.

  • Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.

  • American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.

  • Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.

  • Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

  • Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.

  • 82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.

  • A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.

  • Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.

  • One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.

  • A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.

  • For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.

  • Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.

  • You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.

  • Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.

  • Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.

  • An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!

  • States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.

  • Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.

  • You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.

  • Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.

  • Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.

  • You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.

  • If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.

  • It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.

  • A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.