On the podcast today, we have Hannah Smith.
Hannah is the Operations and Training Manager for the Green Web Foundation and founder of the Let’s Green The Web campaign. She’s also co-founder of Green Tech South West.
Her background is in Computer Science. She previously worked as a freelance WordPress developer, and also for the Environment Agency, where she managed large business change projects.
It’s pretty easy to forget that the device that you’re reading this post on is consuming power. We plug things in or charge them up, and they just work. They are sleek and sterile. No pollution comes out of the device directly. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that many of us never make the connection between our use of technology and the impact this has on the environment.
Enter Hannah Smith. She’s been thinking about this for years and is on the podcast today to highlight the issue, and hopefully get your ideas about what users of WordPress can do to make sure that the websites we create are having the smallest impact possible.
Her approach is not that we need to cease and desist using our technology. Rather, it’s about coming up with new and innovative ways that we can reduce the impact that we have.
As creators of websites, there are a whole raft of options available to us. Reducing the size of our images. Inspecting the HTML to remove bloat. Choosing hosting options that source renewable energy.
With this in mind, Hannah and others have been working on a sustainability related blog post which has been published on the Make WordPress site this week.
This post is intended to trigger meaningful and open discussion in the global WordPress community about the topic of sustainability. She really wants to encourage others to weigh into this public conversation with their own thoughts, so we can build on what is already happening to make WordPress more sustainable.
It’s a fascinating and thought-provoking topic.