SCOTTISH distiller Dunnet Bay is preparing to launch a new, low-carbon website after securing a grant from the Scottish Government.
The DigitalBoost grant will cover half the cost of redeveloping the Dunnet Bay website so that it generates less carbon per page load, per user. It comes after an assessment of the business found that each page load generated between two and six grams of carbon.
Ultimately, the company concluded that its site would have created around three tonnes of carbon in the past year. The directors reckon the redesign will cut that by around a half.
“Whilst we want to continue to see an increase in the number of customers visiting our website, we are keen to mitigate the environmental impact,” said distillery co-founder Martin Murray.
“It’s our intention to use the existing successful designs, but to alter the behind-the-scenes operations to use fewer resources and optimise operations.”
Web developer Naomi Spirit of digital agency From This Day said the amount of CO2 generated by websites is an “important area to tackle”.
“Unfortunately, most of the green solutions for digital CO2 involved offsetting which is not a scalable solution; it’s important to also tackle this issue at the source. We have been changing the way we develop websites over the last two years to ensure they are as low carbon as possible and were delighted when Dunnet Bay Distillers decided to incorporate this into their plans.”
The website redesign is one of several steps Dunnet Bay Distillers has taken to improve its carbon footprint.
Other initiatives include introducing fully recyclable packaging for refill pouches, using solar energy and reusing botanicals and other materials.
