We all have a responsibility to make sure we are implementing green, responsible systems of the future. 

In a recent member's call, Andy Eva-Dale from UK-based digital agency Tangent shed light on ICT emissions and where we sit as an industry in the global carbon emissions story.

As the Technical Director at Tangent, Andy mentors a 45+ strong department, creating cloud-first, scalable, robust, secure, globally distributed applications. Andy is active in the community, championing sustainable system design, diversity in tech and dyslexia awareness

In the call he took us through “10 Do’s and Don’ts of Sustainable Systems” with actionable ideas and features of green system implementation and design. He also drew attention to the parallels between performance, scalability, cost saving and carbon with real-world metrics from some of the projects they’ve delivered at Tangent. In addition, we looked at what the big hosting platforms are doing to tackle the problem, as well as how best to measure your systems from a carbon and cost perspective.

As a final bonus, Andy provided a brief progress update on the new Umbraco Sustainability Team.

As you might already know from following our work, the information communications technology (ICT) sector contributes ~4% of global greenhouse gas emissions – this is equivalent to global aviation. 

In a recent member call hosted by Leah Goldfarb from cloud hosting platform Platform.sh, she explored how to reduce your carbon footprint in the cloud quantitatively. She also unpacked what information is needed for a carbon audit in the cloud, Platform.sh’s approach to carbon calculations, and concluded with how a shared-responsibility model will help us minimise carbon emissions. 

Leah works as Environmental Impact Officer at Platform.sh in Paris. She is a certified Climate Leader and belongs to the “Climate Reality Leadership Corps”. Al Gore, the 2007 Nobel Prize winner, trained Leah to give informative presentations on climate change and how to address this issue, which affects all of us. 

If you think that going green on your website is just something for the few, you are not the only one. Still, while it might be a relatively new requirement for many, and we still have a long way to go, there’s change afoot.

According to Hannah Smith, who works as Operations and Training Manager for the Green Web Foundation, customers increasingly care about environmentally sustainable digital leadership and it’s no longer just a novelty to think about the green web.

In the UK, Hannah is seeing large and complex organisations integrating sustainability into their procurement for digital services. Joining us in a recent member call, Hannah shared case studies and examples on how her team is accelerating the transition to a fossil-free internet.

Reducing and mitigating the impact of climate change is the key challenge of our time and designers have a vital role to play in reducing emissions and mitigating their impact. According to the UK Design Council around 80% of the environmental impact of today’s products, services and infrastructures are determined at the design stage.

In a recent member call, Val Mitchell introduced the work of the Thriving Planet team at Snook and how they are beginning to use the principles and practice of Service Design to consider the needs of our planet alongside the needs of organisations and users.

How do we create web pages from the lens of sustainability and how do we measure the carbon footprint of our digital presence?

At UK-based website governance vendor Little Forest, Managing Director Gavin Colborne and his team are working on a new open source project which will introduce a "Sustainability Score" for websites.

As he said in our recent member call:

“Similar to Google Lighthouse scores for accessibility, SEO and performance, the time has come to also be serious about sustainability as a digital leader.”

In his 2020 book 'World Wide Waste', Gerry McGovern shares how to achieve digital growth in environmentally friendly ways.

Gerry McGovern built his career on helping large organisations deliver a better digital customer experience. When reviewing his career, Gerry realised that his obsession with simplification could also benefit the environment, which led him to write World Wide Waste, a book about how digital is killing our planet and what we can do about it.