“I think the average we’ve been recording is 1.7 grams of CO2 per page view,” Tom explains. “If you’ve got a small website where you blog about vegetables and not many people read it, then it’s not worth worrying about. But it scales up really quickly. Most websites have at least a few thousand views a month; popular websites you’re into hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of views a month. Suddenly you start getting into really big numbers.”

Tom and Vineeta realised that how a website is designed has a significant bearing on the energy it requires. A simple text-based site, for instance, will need a lot less energy than one with 3D rotating logos and a moving background. As a sustainable web designer, Wholegrain put this consideration front and centre, building websites that meet a client’s brief in the most efficient way possible. “That’s the challenge for us as a team: how do we deliver them the most efficient product that still does what they want it to do in terms of user experience and functionality,” Tom continues.

This also helps us evaluate browsing on an individual level. Streaming video, for instance, uses more energy than reading text. It’s worth noting that video streaming from platforms like YouTube, Netflix and others made up more than 60% of global internet traffic around the world in 2019—a number likely to have significantly increased since the world went into lockdown. That isn’t to say you should immediately cancel your Mubi subscription, but as with all habits, it can’t hurt to cut down on unnecessary excess. Small things like sending fewer emails, or cutting down on your internet time in general, can help too.

Really though, this is a question of where the energy we’re using is coming from.