Eco-design is 20 years old, shall we talk about it?

Jan 30
6 min read

ADEME, the French Agency for Ecological Transition, tells us that the concept of eco-design emerged internationally in 2002 with the publication of a prestigious standard, ISO/TR 14062, which stated its objective was to integrate environmental considerations into product design and development.

There you have it, the foundations were laid!

But let's provide some historical context before discussing eco-design: in 2002, the dot-com bubble had just burst, and Amazon, for the first time in its short history, finally became profitable, surpassing one billion dollars in sales on its global e-commerce platform.

Today, 20 years later, Amazon's revenue stands at over 110 billion dollars, and the enormous profits generated are no longer solely linked to this e-commerce platform but also to its cloud computing service, AWS, which accounts for more than half of that figure.

Of course, the established cloud providers like Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and IBM Cloud are also gaining ground, with Chinese cloud companies like Alibaba, Baidun, and Tencent experiencing explosive growth.

Gartner estimates that by 2022, the public cloud market will be worth $400 billion, and if we consider the entire cloud sector, it will reach $1 trillion.

Even if it were still necessary to list all these figures to understand the scale the Web has reached in 20 years, both in our personal and professional lives, it wouldn't suffice to describe the frenzy of global digital consumption.

This frenzy isn't just the world's, or that of others; it's also ours: you and I, where we had one computer 20 years ago, now have one or more laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and sometimes all sorts of connected devices at home, the number of which is constantly increasing: a television, a doorbell, an electrical outlet, light bulbs, or even a baby monitor.

With Covid-19 also having its impact, remote work has taken on an increasingly important role in our lives, and we've sometimes had to equip ourselves accordingly, buying a printer or even a second monitor, to avoid straining our eyesight in addition to losing our social lives.

The digital barometer published on the website of the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Recovery indicates that:

In France alone, more than 8 out of 10 people (84%) own a smartphone: a 7% increase in one year.
More than half of people own a tablet (56%): a 14% increase in one year.
73% of French people own multiple devices for internet access (a 5% increase for those owning three devices).

Digital technology has become quite simply indispensable: for us as individuals, through both our purchases of digital equipment and our consumption of it, but also for our businesses, which have embarked on a digital transformation in the race for competitive efficiency.

Digital technology accounts for 4% of greenhouse gas emissions.

This consumption of equipment and use of digital technology has a particularly evident impact on our planet, its resources, and more specifically on its carbon footprint and greenhouse gas concentration.

Digital technology currently accounts for:

4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. By comparison, this is double that of air transport. And this figure will likely double by 2025!
10% of global electricity consumption

We initially tended to think that digitalization made us more "green," and that reading the news digitally prevented cutting down trees… But it's not that simple, and it's urgent that Homo numericus become aware of its reckless and uncontrolled consumption and environmental impact.

I'll briefly remind you, to simplify, that the greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon that has always protected us by ensuring viable temperatures on Earth. However, human activity, by significantly increasing these temperatures, is increasingly disrupting the climate, and the catastrophic effects risk accelerating, knocking at our door to open our eyes if we continue to look away.

We now know that many factors contribute to increasing greenhouse gases, but let's focus on the factors related to digital technology.

To understand the impact of digital technology on the environment, it's important to remember that ADEME (the French Agency for Ecological Transition) identifies three main sources of digital pollution:

1. Digital Devices

From their manufacturing process, which consumes a large amount of fossil fuels, to assembly, which obviously takes place on the other side of the world, and their transport to points of sale: the carbon footprint of digital devices is enormous. They alone account for 47% of greenhouse gas emissions.

2. The Internet

The network required for an internet connection relies on multiple cable networks, a significant portion of which is submarine, stretching across the seabed for hundreds, even thousands of kilometers. Laying these cables, as well as maintaining the networks, consumes considerable energy. Network infrastructure accounts for 28% of the greenhouse gas emissions from digital consumption.

3. Data Centers

All our data, both personal and professional, passes through data centers: our documents, emails, photos, and videos. These centers require a great deal of electricity to run hundreds of servers and the necessary air conditioning systems. And this electricity is overwhelmingly produced by coal-fired power plants (excluding France, where electricity comes primarily from nuclear power). Data centers account for 25% of greenhouse gas emissions from the digital sector.

With these figures before us, we all need to act, and our collective eco-responsibility, as digital players, begins by aligning digital transformation with the ecological transition.

Taking action means integrating responsible digital practices into our daily work.

I won't go into detail here about carbon footprints or the greenhouse gas (GHG) assessments that companies are required to conduct, but to identify areas for action, as always, you'll need to measure your carbon footprint.

But right now, you can and should steer your digital projects towards digital sobriety: this doesn't mean doing less, but doing as much or better, with less.

Integrate eco-design principles into your projects to achieve greater digital sustainability.

Specifically, to limit your environmental footprint when creating a website and/or mobile application, you should focus on the following areas:

The devices themselves: your users' computers and your mobile users' smartphones.
Their lifespan, whether for client equipment or the servers hosting your site.
The duration of your users' visits.
The type of internet connection required.

These four factors must be considered in your eco-design to address the three previously identified sources of digital pollution.

In digital eco-design, as with any eco-design of a product or service, you must address all stages of the lifecycle.

These four levers must therefore be considered throughout the website or application lifecycle, whether using an agile or V-model approach.

And here, Pareto's principle once again sheds light on distinguishing the essential from the secondary: it's necessary to optimize what will have the greatest impact.

The Upstream Phase

80% of the environmental impact reduction gains we can achieve happen here, before the development phase. You will therefore need to pay particular attention to the entire design of your application: from business needs to graphic templates.

Some methodological approaches for eco-design:

Be User-Centric. 70% of features are not used, or are rarely used: streamline them and keep only the essential features for the user.
Think Green UX: optimize user journeys as much as possible to reduce the number of screens and unnecessary user time.
Keep It Simple & Stupid: the less complex your site, the less CO2 it will emit.
Mobile-First: designing for mobile requires optimizing interface efficiency.
Innovate: all stakeholders in the design phases must take technical constraints into account; they must not design a system that will be resource-intensive or costly in terms of client-server communication. Innovation arises from constraints.
Resource: Don't simply reinvent the wheel. Implement a Design System.
Modularize: Use a modular architecture to leverage only the necessary resources (microservices, etc.).
Accessibility: A system designed with accessibility in mind (RGAA) will optimize the user experience, notably by simplifying the data structure. Simplifying here means improving inclusivity.

The Code

Even if it's not the phase where you can achieve the greatest impact, it shouldn't be neglected. Optimizing your code will reduce energy consumption.

Some suggestions:

Optimize: Develop optimized algorithms.
Compress: Use compression for network traffic.
Move: Favor server-side processing to avoid transmitting large amounts of unsorted data.
Open Source: Promote open source by reusing software components.
Analyze: Use tools like SonarQube to audit your code. You can then measure its maintainability, find unused code, identify duplicate code, and more.
Inspect the performance of your web pages: Use the tools provided by your preferred browsers. Firefox, Chrome, or Safari allow you to finely inspect the network traffic generated by a page, the number of HTTP requests, or the size of images.
Calculate your emissions directly by installing the Green-IT extension (Chrome or Firefox only): you will instantly obtain an Ecoindex or greenhouse gas estimates.
Manage your version control systems by storing only what is necessary (no binaries, compiled files, etc.).

Downstream Impact

The entire hosting aspect of a digital project can have a significant impact on the environment and on climate change. Here too, we can take control and steer our choices towards greater digital sustainability.