Eco-design is no longer an option, but a necessity in the quest for digital sustainability. In this respect, it’s important to differentiate genuine sustainability efforts from mere greenwashing strategies. The Référentiel général d’éco-conception de services numériques (RGESN) meets this need for transparency and commitment.
Eco-design vs. greenwashing
💡 The term greenwashing refers to a communication method used by an organization with the aim of creating a socially and environmentally responsible image – often further removed from reality.
As a web developer, I’m constantly faced with performance, accessibility and web quality challenges. When I heard about the RGESN (Référentiel général d’éco-conception de services numériques), it immediately appealed to me, because it perfectly completes the field of intervention of a good web craftsman.
When discussing eco-design, we generally encounter three types of reaction:
- Eco-enthusiasts who believe that an eco-designed site is the solution to all ecological problems. They think it could save the planet, counter global warming, and protect species like seals and polar bears.
- Eco-opportunists, in a corporate context, believe that this will compensate for every mistake, lead to carbon neutrality, cancel out the CO2 of every trip, and result in impeccable Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
- Eco-skeptics completely reject the argument, suspecting that it’s simply greenwashing.
As someone who likes to have opinions, I went to study this new reference system to fully understand and have a clearer vision of the subject.
And… I immediately felt at home! Indeed, there’s a certain familiarity with the Opquast web quality repository – of which I’ve been a black belt since last year!
The RGESN is a collection of universal, useful and verifiable eco-design rules. Like web quality, it’s a journey, an endurance marathon, whose aim is to create a foundation of best practices with the ambition of progressively improving the web.
Eco-design integrates environmental criteria right from the design phase, aiming to minimize the ecological footprint while maintaining quality. Unlike greenwashing, eco-design represents a genuine and tangible commitment to the environment.
So to sum up:
Greenwashing can be deceptive, giving a false impression of sustainability. It’s a marketing strategy that can mislead consumers, contenting themselves with a green appearance without any real transformation of production processes.
Eco-design, on the other hand, is transparent and authentic, seeking to improve reality rather than disguise it. It puts sustainability into practice, going beyond ecological pretensions to make concrete efforts to reduce environmental impact. It’s a long-term philosophy, but a very important one to implement.
A universal reference system in 8 sections
1. Strategy
The eco-design strategy requires particular attention to environmental impacts and service utility. User needs must be taken into account, and adaptation to different types of terminal is essential. A digital eco-design coordinator must be identified, and objectives and indicators set to measure and reduce impacts.
2. Specifications
Specifications must integrate environmental impact reduction objectives into design and code reviews. It is also important to plan for the decommissioning of unused components, and to choose third-party suppliers and services that are committed to reducing their impact.
3. Architecture
The architecture must be designed to reduce environmental impact. This can be done by adapting the amount of resources used to the consumption of the service, keeping up with the technical evolution of protocols, and providing for corrective updates throughout the service’s lifetime.
4. UX (“user experience”)
The user experience must take into account the digital divide and optimize the navigation path to reduce the number of queries. Animations are optional, as are third-party services, videos and analytics. It’s also important to limit unnecessary notifications and give users the option of not loading everything.
5. Contents
Content must be optimized in terms of size, in particular by compressing images, audio, video and other files.
6. Front-end
The front-end must respect a weight limit per screen, limit the number of requests, and use techniques such as caching, lazy loading and local storage. It should also serve images at the right size, and reduce or limit the amount of data exchanged.
7. Back-end
The back-end should be optimized by activating the server cache, using compression and archiving or deleting out-of-date documents.
8. Hosting
Last but not least, the choice of hosting provider should be based on environmental criteria. We recommend choosing a hosting provider that is close to the site’s audience, complies with European codes of conduct (PUE, WUE), uses renewable energy sources and has environmental certification (ISO14001, ISO50001, LEED, BREAM, HQE).
So?
That’s all very interesting, but how can I put these principles into practice in my day-to-day work as a developer?
- I can choose a good hosting company by checking its certifications.
- I can reduce the number of server environments used to a reasonable number (for example, one for development and one for production).
- I can organize workshops with customers to identify really useful features and eliminate those that seem superfluous.
- I can use tools like Ecoindex, correct problems and constantly monitor a site’s evolution – work that’s already been done for performance, but that can be taken further by making more ecological choices.
- To go a step further, I could also imagine giving the user a choice over the data they wish to download (such as images, videos, optional fonts, etc.).
- I can automate resource optimization as much as possible: image compression, fonts, CSS, JS, etc…
Do WordPress and eco-design go hand in hand?
The last two versions of WordPress have benefited from a huge effort on the part of developers to boost CMS performance. Thanks to the introduction of the new Interactivity API based on Preact ( React‘s cousin) and the brand new way of loading JS modules, we’re witnessing a major change, similar to the revolution we already experienced in the golden days of jQuery.
With this new approach, we’ll no longer be thinking in terms of templates, but in terms of blocks. Each of these blocks will bring its own CSS and JS, with the aim of building pages with hyper-optimized resources.
Conclusions
So, adopting digital sobriety – and the same goes for accessibility, for example – should not be a challenge, but rather a simple and obvious default choice. Eco-design is not greenwashing. It’s a clear and tangible commitment to the environment: an approach that deserves to be applauded, encouraged and applied as widely as possible. And fortunately, WordPress is here to make our lives easier!
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