Lesson 16Tools to check your website sustainability score

Notion 98

How to determine whether a website uses a green web host

Target skills

Become acquainted with tools for checking whether a website uses a green hosting provider.

The importance of green web hosting

As already discussed in Notion 4 of this module, choosing a green web host is another way to reduce a website's carbon footprint. Traditional hosting (otherwise known as 'grey' hosting) requires a lot of power to run, increasing energy and costs. Unlike traditional hosting, green hosting works by either generating energy using its renewable power or using a certified green energy supplier as a proxy to run its services.

You can check the use of green hosting providers with automated tools. Determining whether a website (or your digital project specifically) uses green hosting can help you make decisions on creating a more sustainable online presence.

External tools for checking the sustainability of your website host

The two tools mentioned below allow users to type in the URL of a website and immediately see the sustainability of that website's host.

The tools differ among themselves in the scope of their functions: The Green Web Foundation assesses only the metric of sustainable hosting, whereas that is only one of the metrics you can check on the Ecograder website. However, both tools are helpful for not only determining whether a website is sustainably hosted, but also for getting tips on which web hosting providers to turn to if your website is not hosted 'green'.

The links for accessing the websites in question are: