Your Website’s Dirty Little Secret
Think digital products don’t leave a mess? Think again. Just because you can’t drop a website in a landfill doesn’t mean it’s squeaky clean. Every scroll, click, and cat meme takes energy—lots of it. Servers chug along 24/7, devices guzzle electricity, and old gadgets? Straight to e-waste mountain.
Sustainable product design isn’t just for packaging and reusable water bottles anymore. It’s for apps, websites, and anything that lives on a screen. Digital sustainability means building smarter, lighter, and greener experiences that don’t drain the planet just to load a homepage.
Here’s a fun (and slightly terrifying) fact: according to the Sustainable Web Manifesto, if the Internet were a country, it would be the fourth largest polluter on Earth. Yikes. Designers and developers have the power (and honestly, the responsibility) to do something about it. Clean code, efficient design, and thoughtful choices aren’t just good practice—they’re good karma.
Next time you’re tweaking your UI or building a new app, ask yourself: could this be faster, lighter, or just plain nicer to the Earth? It’s not just design—it’s digital composting.