A thoughtful look at the idea of sustainability in web development and design, particularly in terms of whether worrying about an individual design choice's carbon footprint is meaningful or simply obfuscating the much larger issues around server farms, package size, etc.

On greenwashing in web design:

She said that real impact isn’t going to come from individual websites changing their colour schemes. Real impact is going to come from making server farms run on renewable energy.

Most of the important work around energy usage on websites is invisible. It’s the work done to not add more images, more JavaScript or more web fonts.

On why defaults matter and how the invisible work is often more important:

I suspect there might be a similar mindset at work when it comes to interface toggles for low-carbon mode. It might make you feel good. It might make you look good. But it’s a poor substitute for making your website carbon-neutral by default.