While the discussion has started much earlier, the first book about Sustainable Web Design in the English speaking realm was Tim Frick’s Designing for Sustainability – A Guide to Building Greener Digital Products & Services, which was published in 2016 by O’Reilly. In the book, Tim explains the foundations of sustainability and its definition and outlines a framework for designing more sustainable digital products and services, which consists of the categories design and UX, content, performance optimisation and green ingredients, including green hosting. The book also includes research on devising meaningful ways to measure the environmental impact of digital work and looks at what a more sustainable future Internet might be.
Published just this year (2021), Tom Greenwood’s Sustainable Web Design (available at A Book Apart) goes into detail on how we can measure our impact, how we can design low-carbon websites, what sustainable web development looks like, and how green web hosting works.
Tom also explains how to sell Sustainable Web Design, which he has experience with his agency Wholegrain digital. He talks about being selective when it comes to projects, something that I always advocated as well, but was hesitant and wary of people’s reactions.
You can get a little taster of Tom talking about his experience in this podcast episode 103: Sustainable Websites – Tom Greenwood, Wholegrain Digital.
Also only published in 2020 by Silber Beach is Gerry McGovern’s World Wide Waste – How digital is killing our planet – And what we can do about it. The book looks a bit broader on digital consumption and the waste that comes with it. It looks at organisations and consumer behaviour, and as such also at personal and cultural change in our relationship with media consumption that is inevitable.
Help me keep this list up to date, if you have and book or resource suggestions, please leave a comment or contact me!