The SAND agency commits to the production of low-carbon sites

This commitment is part of an approach that we feel is necessary in view of the evolving climate challenges we are currently facing, and which is in line with the actions taken by asset management players in their SRI and ESG approach.
And because respect for the environment is everyone’s business, and website operations now account for a significant proportion of global energy consumption.

Digital pollution in figures

– If the Internet were a country, it would be the world’s 3rd largest consumer of electricity after China and the United States; – 7 to 10% of the world’s electricity is consumed by the Internet alone; – Watching an hour’s video on a tablet or smartphone consumes more electricity than a refrigerator for an entire year; – A simple Google search alone could heat a cup of tea; – According to the Agence de l’environnement et de la maîtrise de l’énergie, sending emails in a company of 100 people represents 13.6 tonnes of CO2 every year; – The annual global carbon footprint of spam is equivalent to 3 million cars on the road every year.
This releases 17 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, or 0.2% of global emissions (source: ICF).

What is the carbon footprint of a website?

By way of example, the carbon footprint of our agency’s website for one year corresponds to : – 138.4 kg of CO2 equivalent that’s as much CO2 as it takes to heat a kettle for 18,754 cups of tea; – 322kWh of energy This corresponds to the electricity needed to drive an electric car 2,058 km; – 7 trees : the number of trees needed to absorb the amount of carbon our site will produce in a year; These are figures we can no longer ignore, which is why we have decided that our next projects will be subject to even greater attention to optimizing the resources consumed by the sites we produce.
So we’ll be even more vigilant about : – Optimization of the weight of visuals and videos used – Optimization of code and the number of requests used – Caching of different site resources – Increased support in the choice and operation of chosen hosting solutions We’ll also be keen to ensure that all this doesn’t come at the expense of the quality we attach to each project and the ease of use for web users. For this reason, we will offset the production costs of each site we create by making a donation to the Treedom platform. Treedom which creates sustainable ecosystems and supports farmers around the world in tree planting, while guaranteeing them food independence and income opportunities.
For 2020, we have already begun to finance 7 tonnes of C02 to offset our activity and the consumption of our customers’ sites.
Each new site created by our agency will be optimized to minimize the resources required for its operation, and will be accompanied by the planting of trees around the world.
The SAND agency team