This week, thousands of delegates have landed in Antalya for COP31. Türkiye is hosting, Australia’s Chris Bowen is leading the negotiations and the headline themes are finance, adaption and, as always, the climate goals themselves. The general feeling is ‘from words to action’ – something we can get behind as a business that walks the walk.
With all of that said, here is a gentle little question to carry with you while the headlines roll by and COP31 comes and goes…
When your organisation says ‘net zero’, does that include your digital?
If you’re not sure, don’t worry, you’re in very good company.
The thing we quietly forget
Most purpose-driven organisations we work with are brilliant at the big, visible stuff. Travel policies, office energy suppliers, pension funds, the office coffee. These are great and live nicely in a spreadsheet.
The digital side often doesn’t. Websites, apps, hosting, email platforms, video, analytics, third party tools and a mountain of historical digital debt that has crept up over the years you have been in operation like an overflowing laundry bin. It all feels hidden, weightless, because we cant see it or tough it. But we are all quite aware now that this isn’t true – every page view runs through data centres (our industries break out topic of conversation in 2026). Networks and devices draw on electricity and a lot of that still comes from fossil fuels.
I know what you’re thinking – we all know this, Chris! You tell us about it all the time’. Correct, and yet, it’s still the blind spot. Not because people are careless but because digital still has the image of being ‘cleaner’ by default.
How we ended up caring about it so much
A side quest in case you don’t know Wholegrain too well or we are relatively new to you.
Wholegrain didn’t start out with this view either. Back in 2017, whilst we were going through our B Corp Certification, a question in the assessment about environmental impact of the things we make stumped us – “erm, we don’t know” wasn’t the reply B Corp were hoping for.
We went down the rabbit hole and the it led us to creating the Website Carbon Calculator and becoming leaders in the space of sustainable web design that also delivers high performance. It’s easy to see now but of course sustainable and human led practices also create high performance digital experiences.
Back to my original thread – why does this matters for purpose-driven organisations?
If you’re a charity, a social enterprise, a B Corp or a mission-led brand, your online digital platforms and website are often your biggest public facing asset. It’s how people find your cause, donate, sign up, get support or learn.
It’s also the place where your values show up or they don’t.
A few reasons as to why the digital blind spot is worth closing:
- Credibility
Climate commitments, rightly so, get scrutinised. A net zero plan that skips a major and constantly growing part of your footprint is harder to defend than one that includes it, even if that’s imperfectly. - Reporting
Everyone’s favourite word – reporting. If you report on your emission, digital service will often sit in your wider value chain. Even rough estimates are better than a blank line. - Accessibility and inclusion
Lighter, simpler sites load faster on patchy connections. Makes sense put that simply, doesn’t it. That’s obviously better for people with lower bandwidth, which is often who purpose-driven organisations are trying to reach or support. - Performance and conversion
faster pages tend to keep people around who want to stay around whilst encouraging those who need a quick resolve to find and exit, building trust with your audience. Lower carbon and better results often mean the same thing.
There’s a nice irony here too. COP is, at heart, about turning ambition into action. Digital is one the few areas where the action is both small enough to start next wee and big enough to matter at scale.
Where to start?*
*Without a huge investment and 6 month project.
The good news is that you don’t need to rebuild everything. A relaxed, sensible first pass looks something like:
- Measure the basics by running your jey pages through tools like Website Carbon. It’s a solid estimate, not a lab test, but it gives you a starting point to have a conversation with your team.
- Look to your hosting, is it powered by renewable energy? This one is spoken about a lot but for a reason. This is an easy and quick change maker. Ask them for evidence too, its a simple ask.
- Go on a page weight diet by removing oversized images and auto play videos – they are usually the easiest culprits to find. Compress, resize and ask whether the background video is increasing the experience for the few but causing accessibility and weight issues for the many.
- Audit those pesky third party scripts. Trackers, widgets and plugins can really pile up and is nobody remembers why they are even there, its probably nominating itself for removal.
- Build it into new projects from day one, not as an afterthought check box. This is the cheapest way to get the highest performing, accessible, low weight product in the end run. ‘Retrofitting’ is never a word your team or digital agency will like to hear.
- Finally – add digital to the wider net zero conversation in your organisation, right there on the agenda beside travel, energy supplier and the coffee.
Lets also remember, this doesn’t require perfection. It just needs noticing so the ball starts rolling.
A friendly takeaway
We’ve found that the organisations who make the most progress are the ones who treat this with curiosity, not guilt. Nobody is flawless and our websites are not either, but there are some easy wins hiding in plain sight that you can use to get confident and knowledge to then move into bigger, more impactful work.
COP31 will produce a wave of pledges and some controversial opinions and everything else that comes with it over the next few weeks but whatever comes out of Antalya, the real work still happens in organisations like yours, at your desk or in the office.
So when your net zero plan comes up, or that Sustainability Lead comes knocking, ask the simple question:
Where is our digital in this conversation?
It might be the perfect starting place for real change.
Curious as to what your sites footprint looks like and how that could be holding your audience back? Get in touch with the team for a quick, friendly and definitely non-judgemental chat!
