Design Declares case studies tell stories of projects that are striving to address the climate crisis through the lens of the 8 Acts of Emergency
Global D! supporters MEK are a Melbourne-based purpose-driven design studio. They re-designed their studio website, reducing it’s carbon emissions by 67%! Here they share their process and findings along the way
<aside> 🔗 The 8 Acts
1.SOUND THE ALARM
2.START THE JOURNEY
3.BRING CLIENTS WITH US
4.MEASURE WHAT WE MAKE
5.REDEFINE ‘GOOD’
6.EDUCATE, ACCELERATE
7.DESIGN FOR JUSTICE
8.AMPLIFY VOICES FOR CHANGE
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2.START THE JOURNEY
Our website has been specifically designed to reduce CO2 emissions and energy consumption associated with accessing and viewing our content.
In an industry first, we documented exactly how we approached and solved this challenge so we can inspire others to do the same and help businesses transition to sustainable digital practices. This open source case study also serves as a roadmap to help designers, studios and agencies create low emission websites as a new service to offer clients looking to reduce their impact.
Because if the internet was a country it would be the world’s fourth biggest polluter.
We need to do better.
4.MEASURE WHAT WE MAKE
We answered ‘Driving 1km in a car’, because duh.
Well, we were wrong.
Since learning this startling fact (and losing yet another round of trivia), we wondered what the carbon footprint of our email usage was. We went through all our mail folders and deleted every email we didn’t need or weren’t actively engaged in conversation with.
Before we knew it we’d delved deeper into the world of digital landfill, and like a *Choose Your Own Adventure* book we had two options:
Turn back
Do a complete audit
We couldn’t unknow what we learned, so we started researching resources that would help calculate our emissions.