Website Carbon Calculator

We’ve recently started thinking about refreshing our website, with all the usual dilemmas of trying to figure out if it does a good job telling people what Black Pine is about, and how we might do that better. As part of that process, we came across something new (to us, at least): the website carbon calculator.

Until now, we’d never considered the carbon impact of a website because, well, how big could it possibly be? We popped our URL into the calculator and got a ‘C’ carbon rating, which apparently means we’re “cleaner than 58% of all web pages globally.” That seemed reasonable for something we’d never thought about.

It’s not an exact science but, as a general guide, the calculator suggests the current annual carbon footprint of our website is worth a few kilograms of CO2; that’s equivalent to a few hundred charges of a smartphone, or the amount of carbon absorbed by one tree. So, not much in the grand scheme, but it’s something. And since we now know about it, we’re compelled to do something about it.

We’ve recently started looking ahead towards our B-Corp re-certification and working through a list of things the business has done, and intends to do, to keep making a positive change. Improving the carbon footprint of our website is now part of that thinking.

When we first raised the concept of a website carbon calculator with our developers, there was an understandable hint of skepticism. Like us, they figured it was so small that it would be of little consequence. But, unlike us, they don’t just host one website; they host several hundred.

It was a nice reminder, for all of us, that the little things we choose to do can have a bigger impact.