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12 Ways To Reduce Carbon Footprints as a Full Stack Developer
Minimize CO2 emissions
We had an interesting presentation about Digital Sustainability at Dynamo recently that made me think about what I could do to reduce my ecological footprint in my day-to-day job as a full stack developer. That inspired me to write this post.
The simplest way to define ecological footprint would be to call it the impact of human activities measured in terms of the area of biologically productive land and water required to produce the goods consumed and to assimilate the wastes generated. More simply, it is the amount of the environment necessary to produce the goods and services necessary to support a particular lifestyle.
— WWF
Did you know that the IT industry’s greenhouse gas emissions are predicted to reach 14% of global emissions by 2040? And that if the internet was a country, it would be the 7th largest polluter? It’s impressive, isn’t it?
Thinking about all the approaches I have used during my career to optimize web apps, e-commerce, and portals projects, I have concluded that the lighter and faster the application loads to the user, the more efficient energy consumption the application will have. So here are some tips you could use on your next project.
Measure
You can use tools like WebsiteCarbon.com to measure how eco-friendly your website is. In addition, you can use Safari's Lighthouse on DevTools to measure its energy impact. Then, use the following tips to form an attack plan to solve the possible issues.
Choose Renewable Energy Host Providers
Host providers and data centers may not look like they use a lot of power, but they have thousands of computers to process data and the room gets very warm. They need to keep the air cool, so air conditioning systems are a must for this industry and those systems consume a lot of energy.
The Green Web Foundation is doing a fantastic job by providing a list of the most eco-friendly host providers in the…
