It’s no secret anymore: the ever-growing digital sector has heavy consequences on the planet. In 2022, it was estimated that digital technology accounted for 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions—that’s 1.5 times more than air transport (source: Ademe). Projections for the next five years are far from encouraging: the environmental impact of digital technology could double.
First, let’s define digital sobriety: it is “an approach aimed at reducing the environmental impact of digital technology by limiting its usage.”
With a total number of websites approaching 2 billion, and around 576,000 new sites created every day (according to Internet Live Stats, see chart below), the web has become a significant environmental concern. It accounts for 20% of global electricity consumption. Even more worrying is the fact that its carbon footprint is increasing by 8% per year (source: Bercy).
The most energy-consuming activity remains video streaming, which alone represents 1% of CO₂ emissions—about 300 million tons of CO₂.
According to The Shift Project, the use of devices, data centers, and networks accounts for 55% of digital energy consumption, while the production of computers, TVs, smartphones, and other equipment represents 45%.
The EcoIndex can calculate, for each web page tested:
Technical footprint (weight, complexity, etc.)
Application footprint (number of DOM elements, number of requests, etc.)
Physical footprint (CPU usage, RAM consumption, amount of data exchanged…)
Environmental footprint (greenhouse gases and water consumption)
These metrics provide both an absolute environmental performance score (on a scale of 100) and a relative environmental performance grade (from A to G).
The EcoIndex is calculated using three objective physical measurements: DOM size, kilobytes transferred, and number of HTTP requests (source: ecoindex.fr).
This reflection should begin at the design or redesign stage of your website. It applies both to the infrastructure supporting your site and to on-site optimization, i.e., optimizing your content.
Hosting
According to Ademe, 25% of digital greenhouse gas emissions are linked to network infrastructures and data centers. It is therefore essential to optimize your hosting. We recommend choosing a host with strong environmental performance, ideally powered by renewable energy.
It is also highly recommended to implement a CDN (Content Delivery Network), which enables your website to be distributed globally and brings your content closer to your visitors.
Case Study: During the redesign of its website, the IT department of a major luxury group sought to improve its global presence, particularly in Asia. To ensure a better user experience, the group compared several CDN providers. Beyond cost, the group wanted to evaluate CDN efficiency worldwide.
The study measured CDN performance across different regions. It revealed that CDN 1 improved performance by 60% in North America and 30% in Europe and Asia, while CDN 2 improved performance by 60% in North America but had no impact in Europe or Asia. Based on these results, the company was able to choose its CDN not just on cost but on the efficiency-to-price ratio, and challenge providers accordingly.
Source Code
After optimizing hosting, it is essential to review your source code. With measurement tools, you can identify unnecessary code and minify CSS if needed. The lighter your code, the more eco-responsible your website becomes.
Storage
Servers and routers consume a significant amount of energy. It is crucial to adjust usage to limit consumption. Cloud solutions can also be prioritized to pool resources.
Case Study: A global energy group considered migrating to a cloud-based Office solution. It shortlisted two providers: Google and Microsoft. A significant price gap emerged depending on the provider and the number of global hubs deployed. The choice was between a centralized global hub or one per continent (the latter being very costly). ip-label simulated typical employee activities (e.g., downloading an attachment, accessing the intranet) to provide the client with the necessary elements for arbitration and optimization.
Images and Videos
Unsurprisingly, images and videos are the top culprits. Before optimizing, ask whether an image or video is even relevant on a page. Ideally, images should be kept under 300 KB. Tools like Adobe Photoshop, ShortPixel, or TinyPNG can help. Even better, use vector or modern formats (SVG, WebP, WebM) to further lighten pages.
For videos, we recommend hosting them on dedicated platforms (YouTube, Vimeo) and embedding only the URL on your page.
Case Study: ip-label audited a major luxury company integrating videos into its pages. The audit identified optimization opportunities that not only improved performance but also significantly reduced network traffic—generating major cost savings compared to its CDN.
Fonts
Prefer standard fonts natively installed on users’ PCs. This avoids unnecessary HTTP requests and reduces server load.
Design
The more minimalist the design and the stronger the contrast (black text on white background), the more it aligns with digital sobriety principles. Static content also consumes fewer resources than dynamic content. For example, choose a clickable image rather than an online data visualization.
Pages
An eco-responsible website should also have a limited number of pages.
Case Study: For a major banking group, ip-label optimized web pages to improve performance according to Google Core Web Vitals. Beyond performance, these actions also boosted the site’s SEO ranking.
A responsible and high-performing website is possible! The simpler and lighter your site, the more eco-responsible—and at the same time faster and more efficient—it becomes. This enhances navigation quality and makes content more impactful.
Since page load speed is a key SEO ranking factor, this directly improves search engine visibility.
With Ekara, you gain a detailed diagnostic view to identify malfunctions and possible improvements.
Our consultants can already integrate EcoIndex measurement into our services, notably with Ekara Benchmark (to see how you compare to competitors) and Ekara Web Performance (analyzing your site through the dual lens of Web Performance and EcoIndex).