Designing for
Sustainability
O’Reilly Design Conference
March 22, 2017
Better digital solutions for people and planet.
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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
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At 3 Years, 70,000+ sites crawled
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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: [Link]
— 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 [Link]
[Link]
for people and planet.” [Link]
More Resources
Links, Books, Software, etc.
Click Clean Report and Scorecard
[Link]
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Sustainable Web Design Blog – [Link]
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[Link]
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Sustainable UX – [Link]
[Link]
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:
[Link]
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.
