The average website produces 1.76 grams of CO2 per page view. For a website with 10,000 monthly page views, that’s 211 kg of CO2 per year! Now, thats rather a lot of carbon, seeing as there are around 1.75 billion websites on the internet, (Internet Live Stats) with many of them with incredible numbers of views per month.
What we need to do is be able to measure the amount of carbon the websites we build, manage and take on are creating. Only then can we know what measures need to be taken to reduce the carbon emissions, and quantify that amount of carbon removal.
Tools to measure website carbon emissions
Website Carbon Calculator
The website carbon calculator has been created by Wholegrain Digital to help inspire and educate people to create a zero carbon internet. It’s a great tool that is about as easy to use as a tool can be. Drop in your website’s url and click the Calculate button, wait for the API to do it’s magic and whallah, you get a figure telling you how much carbon that website is creating, alongside some quirky facts.
Website Carbon WordPress plugin
A website carbon calculator, for WordPress. Using the same API as the Website Carbon Calculator above, this plugin tests your WordPress website’s carbon on a per page basis, giving you a figure for the amount of carbon being consumed per page. A helpful feature of the plugin is that it allows you to download the results, meaning you can use the plugin to measure the carbon, store those results and deactivate it, make carbon saving changes and then measure again to see how much you have improved. Thats useful!
Google Chrome browser extension
The GreenIT-Analysis extension for Google Chrome measures your website’s EcoIndex, checking against ecometer’s best practices. Use it within the developer tools to measure a number of different variables to check your website’s carbon emissions.