Eco Friendly Web Design

[matt.bluestagstudio]

I hope that whilst you design your black screen websites that you have your heating turned down, and never, ever use air conditioning?

Actually that is the case!

I've always been a firm believer in wrap up if you're cold, open a window if you're hot.

I very rarely use heating in the office or at home, unless it's minus billion in which case it does go on occasionally.

And as a business we do as much as we can without impacting our business, car sharing, public transport etc.

I completely agree that these things are only cherries on top and at the end of the day the initial product/service needs to be top notch...

But if we can try and do our bit as well then it all helps!

And as for the fact there are no green data centres I know of people that are currently applying for funding to build one, powered by hydro electricity with a mains backup.

I can only imagine they've done their research into whether this is viable, but if it is then I can't see why they shouldn't be used if the quality of the product is equally as good.

I'm by no means an eco warrier, but at the same time I think some people do care about it and if offered to them on a plate will take the 'green' option.

Plastic bags in a supermarket is classic example, some people bought the bags for life and took them religously every week and some people are still begging for 20 bags a week from behind the till.

I think it's genuinely an interesting topic (which is why I raised it) and would love to see a green data centre take off. (well as green as a data centre can be anyway!)

[ronwedd]

I like the idea, perhaps to start with you could provide a few pointers from your website to suppliers of 'green' goods and services.

[matt.bluestagstudio]

I like that idea!

[GoGreen]

There is a new site out there called carbonsquash it’s backed by Yahoo - you search and they offset your carbon! Seems like a good brand to be associated with!

[d30web]

I think the design aspect of the industry has a fairly light carbon footprint but where there is a high carbon footprint is in the hosting of the sites and a number of hosts have varbon off setting schemes as well as those in more suited climates use solar energy to limit their carbon footprint.

locating servers to ireland is going to be a likely development if the idea picks up momentum as most of the energy is used to cool servers locating the servere to a cold climate would enable significant savings in energy.

[County4x4]

Can someone confirm this please?

I have often thought the same. Black is made up of zero values in RGB.

Thank You. Our site will stay dark.

From Google itself:

Google users in the United Kingdom will notice today that we "turned the lights out" on the Google homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour. As to why we don't do this permanently - it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display. However, you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.

Andy