Earth Day in the U.S. is April 22. We wanted to share the impact image weight can have on your carbon emissions. The Cloudinary team built the Image Carbon site to allow anyone to analyze a web page(s) to get a rapid indicator of that page’s carbon footprint. Colby Fayock’s post, “Are your website images impacting the environment? Image Carbon can let you know,“ explains how the calculations are made.
The United States government and the Council of the European Union have set goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than half by 2030. In an instance when more is better, some nations, namely Germany, have set more ambitious goals, including being greenhouse gas neutral by 2045 and reducing emissions by 65% in the next seven years.
Often, when countries announce their intention to reach such lofty carbon reduction goals global companies, retailers, and brands have been known to follow suit, or even attempt to outdo their governmental peers.
Reducing carbon emissions is an activity we should all be participating in. This includes the tech sector where carbon emissions are, unfortunately, contributing to the carbon emissions problem. Wholegrain Digital, creators of the Website Carbon Calculator, said the average web page produces 1.76 grams of carbon dioxide per page view. Meaning, it is incumbent on all companies (not just those in the tech sector) to take a closer look at the energy sources powering websites, mobile apps, and IoT experiences and find ways to become part of the solution.
Considering the online traffic websites, especially retail and e-commerce, experience daily, IT teams have an especially difficult job keeping all digital operations running smoothly, while working to save on bandwidth and reduce their carbon footprint.
Cloudinary works closely with companies to reduce their carbon footprint. Some examples include:
- Small means efficient, not poor quality. Brands understandably want the most high-resolution image or video available on their digital platforms, but those can be massive file sizes that eat up bandwidth. Utilizing AI and automation, brands can auto-compress a file to its most optimal size, keeping bandwidth low while ensuring a high-quality visual experience.
- Lightweight image formats reduce bandwidth. Codecs and lightweight image formats require less bandwidth. With the creation of formats like WebP, AVIF, JP2, HEIC, and JPEG XL. (JPEG XL brands can cut global data usage by more than 25% over JPEG alone!) Codecs like AV1 can improve video transmissions by compressing videos more efficiently and using more than 20% less data.
- Keep the cache close. Another way to reduce bandwidth relies on a content delivery network. CDNs use a system of distributed servers across many data centers, so the cache can be close to the user, reducing traffic and carbon footprint.
- Lazy is good. The term “lazy loading” means a site will only load heavy images or videos when it needs to. For example, if there are weighty videos at the bottom of a page, they’re only loaded when a user scrolls to see them.
Brands launching video and image experiences need to be mindful of the amount of carbon their pages/sites are adding to the atmosphere and develop sustainable practices that cut greenhouse emissions and can even improve site performance. With Earth Day (April 22) around the corner, now is a good time to consider how each of us can do our part to protect the planet, because, as we’re learning, good planets are hard to find.
To learn how to go green with Cloudinary, read through Cloudinary’s State of Visual Media Report. To learn how Cloudinary can enhance video and imagery responsibly, contact us here.
