Designing for

Sustainability
O’Reilly Design Conference
March 22, 2017
Better digital solutions for people and planet.
Full Size Image
B the Change

Everything we
produce is part of
a larger system.
Sustainability Blueprint

The B Impact ●  Environment

Assessment ●  Workers
serves as our ●  Governance
Place
image
roadmap for ●  Community
here

building a better ●  Customers

business.
90% OF ALL DATA was created
within the last 12 months.
— Salesforce
 Streaming Media Services
Now account for over 70% of peak North
American Internet traffic (80% by 2020).

— Sandvine
Virtual Reality

Uses 20X more

bandwidth than
HD video. Place
image
here
3.2+ Billion People Are Online
20-50 Billion devices by 2020
Electricity Demand: Cloud Computing VS Countries

UK 318 RUSSIA 729

FRANCE 420 INDIA 774

BRAZIL 457 JAPAN 939 US 3790 CHINA 3862

CANADA 519

GERMANY 522

CLOUD COMPUTING 522

Electricity in billion kWh, 2011
Source: Click Clean Report, Greenpeace
Renewable Energy in U.S.

Only 13% of our

power in the U.S.
comes from Place
image
renewable here

sources.

— U.S. Dept of Energy

 Jevons Paradox
Usability Drives Consumption

A SINGLE TWEET 500M TWEETS/DAY

.02g of CO2 10 Metric Tons of CO2
— Tweetfarts (not to scale)
 Entire Internet:
Nearly 1 billion tons of
annual CO2 and rising
“The Internet is the single biggest thing we’re going to build
as a species...if we build it the right way, with the right
sources of energy, [it] could really help power our transition
to renewables. If we build it the wrong way, it could actually
exacerbate the problem.”

— Gary Cook, Greenpeace

The Big Question

How do we bring
sustainability principles to
the internet?
Systems Thinking

Consider the entire lifecycle of a digital

product or service, not just design or hosting.
U.S. E-waste for
one year = 1.15M
trucks full
— Dr. Pete Markiewicz
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

37% of websites
include at least
one JavaScript Place
image
library with a here

known security
vulnerability.
— Northeastern University study, 2017
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Average web
page size is now
over 2.5MB.
Place
image
here

— HTTP Archive
Some Solutions

Designing for
Sustainability
Efficiency Renewable Energy
Findability
 Accessibility/WCAG 2.0
Blind by Jordan Delcros from the Noun Project Hearing loss by Arthur Shlain from the Noun Project
Usability
Sustainable UX in Practice

Help users make

more sustainable
choices. Place
image
here
Avoid Dark Patterns

HostGator adds
$40 of mysterious
“HostingPlace
image
Addons” when
here

creating an
account. Shady
gator.
Performance
Optimization
 Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Create a page
weight budget.
X00 kb Use the budget
Place
image
to drive decisions
here

during product
life cycle.
Green
Hosting
So Many “Green” Hosts

GREEN
HOSTING
But are they any good?
Unbundled RECs

Renewable Energy “Companies that purchase

Certificates (RECs). RECs and not the electricity
that comes with them are, in
effect, just buying
Place
PR.”
image
here
— David Pomerantz
Greenpeace
A Six Year Journey

GREEN
HOSTING
Lack of Transparency

GREEN
HOSTING Plus 50+ others…
The Largest Non-Utility Investor in
Renewable Energy on the planet.
First Things First

Raising Awareness
EFFICIENC RENEWABLE
Y ENERGY
 Full width
image

At 3 Years, 70,000+ sites crawled

 Full width
image

Ecograder reports
Ecograder Reports
Insert Ecograder infographic findability stat

EFFICIENC RENEWABLE
Y ENERGY
 Insert Ecograder infographic usability stat

EFFICIENC RENEWABLE
Y ENERGY
 Insert Ecograder infographic wpo stat

EFFICIENC RENEWABLE
Y ENERGY
 Insert Ecograder infographic hosting stat

EFFICIENC RENEWABLE
Y ENERGY
Action Items

Things we can do
Get Green Web Hosting
Find a green web host: thegreenwebfoundation.org
— Agency Spotter
Ask Companies to Switch
Let them know clean energy
is a customer priority
Click Clean Scorecard
How to Calculate
Actual Website
Emissions?
Clean Up Device Supply Chains
Designing for
Sustainability
Questions?
Thanks!

“Better digital solutions Mightybytes.com

Ecograder.com

for people and planet.” SustainableWebDesign.org

 More Resources
Links, Books, Software, etc.
Click Clean Report and Scorecard

clickclean.org
 Full width
image

Sustainable Web Design Blog – sustainablewebdesign.org

 Full width
image

Serving.green
 Full width
image

Sustainable UX – sustainableux.com
bcorporation.net
Other B Corp Agencies
Case Study: Climate Ride

BEFORE: Ecograder score =

45
Case Study: Climate Ride

AFTER: Ecograder score = 86

The B Impact Assessment

Roll your
Place
own:
bimpactassessment.net
image
here
Environment

A few sample assessment questions:

How do you track electricity use?

Do you conduct life cycle assessments on your products and services?

Do you offset your use of non-renewable energy in any way?

Do you encourage suppliers to audit their own impact?

Workers

A few sample assessment questions:

Do you pay a living wage to employees?

What is the multiple between your highest and lowest paid workers?

Do you subsidize professional development?

Do you have an employee handbook?

Governance

A few sample assessment questions:

Have you incorporated a commitment to social and/or environmental
responsibility into your written corporate mission statement?

Do you share basic financial information with employees?

Do you produce a report detailing your mission-related performance?

Have you legally institutionalized your mission into the company’s corporate
structure (i.e. a benefit corporation or similar)?
Community

A few sample assessment questions:

Do you purchase goods and services from local and minority/woman-owned
suppliers?

Do you create job opportunities for underserved communities?

Do you offer paid volunteer or community service time?

Do you have a formal partnership to support a local charity?

Customers

A few sample assessment questions:

A new section of the assessment geared toward tracking your work with
mission-aligned customers.