By 2025, without significant efficiency improvements, the internet industry might account for 20% of global electricity and contribute to up to 5.5% of carbon emissions worldwide. (Source: The Guardian)
I hate to bring up this scary stat, but having this awareness in mind makes me, and hopefully you too, more mindful about how our website activities can heat the world.
The good thing is there are some things we can do about it. One of which is always keeping our sites secure.
Now, the question is: How can keeping your site secure help reduce carbon footprints? The short answer is:
When you keep your WordPress site secure (by updating and organizing tools, blocking spam and bad traffic, restricting file editing, etc.), your site becomes healthier. It’s leaner, runs faster, and needs fewer resources (and less electricity)! And therefore, it produces fewer carbon footprints.
Let’s break this down so you have a clearer picture.
Here’s how securing your WordPress site can help reduce its carbon footprint:
#1 Preventing Malware and Hacks:
Malware and hacks can cause your site to consume more server resources, spiking energy usage to handle the extra load. By preventing them, you can help reduce the environmental impact related to maintaining and powering servers.
#2 Mitigating Server Overload:
Insecure websites can be used for hosting malicious content. This can cause server overload because compromised websites overeat resources to serve malicious content or participate in attacks. To me, this sounds like a zombie website. It’s infected; always hungry. By keeping your WordPress site secure, you help prevent it from becoming a zombie website, thus reducing server load and energy consumption.
#3 Optimizing Resource Usage:
WordPress security best practices often involve optimizing resource usage, such as decluttering all the unnecessary (inactive users, trash posts, post revisions, old posts no one cares about, etc.), reducing database requests, and caching content effectively. These optimizations not only improve site security and speed but also reduce server load and energy consumption by requiring fewer resources to serve website content.
#4 Promoting Sustainable Practices:
By prioritizing WordPress security practices, you also contribute to a culture of making the digital space more sustainable by reducing the overall energy consumption of the internet. Your actions could inspire other website owners to do the same, especially when you actively share about it, which leads to more momentum and widespread awareness of digital sustainability.
Summary:
You can say that keeping your site secure creates indirect benefits for the environment. That’s because a secure site is well-guarded from bad traffic and malicious activities, well-optimized, and runs efficiently. This means it consumes less energy. As a result, it produces fewer carbon footprints.
The thing is, when we hear about website security practices (or any website improvement practices, really), we usually hear about how they benefit our site, our users, and our business. It’s still rare to hear about how they benefit our environment. Don’t you agree?