A website with low ecological impact
Environmental responsibility guides all the actions of the One Science Montpellier Foundation. The eco-design of our sites and communication media is a cornerstone of our approach, aimed at reducing our ecological footprint while offering an optimal, sustainable user experience.
What is digital eco-design?
The eco-design of a website consists in planning, designing and developing a digital platform while minimizing its environmental impact. This approach is applied right from the design phase and continues throughout the site’s lifecycle. It is based on several principles:
- Optimized content and media: text, images and videos are optimized to limit data consumption and server power consumption.
- Streamlined architecture and code: clean code and a clear structure improve performance, speed up page loading and reduce digital infrastructure consumption.
- Responsible technologies and hosting: choice of lightweight tools, modular solutions and eco-responsible hosting to reduce overall environmental impact.
- Accessibility and durability: an eco-designed site is not only lighter, but also more accessible, more durable and easier to maintain.
In short, eco-design combines performance, accessibility and environmental responsibility, while guaranteeing the quality of the user experience.
Our approach and the RGESN
For the design of our website, we followed the recommendations of the Référentiel Général d’Éco-Conception des Sites Numériques (RGESN). This approach enabled us to structure our project around concrete, measurable best practices:
- Optimization of visual and media resources: reduction of image and video weight, formatting adapted to digital uses.
- Simplification and rationalization of code: elimination of superfluous functionalities, reduction of server requests and optimization of scripts.
- Sustainable hosting: use of energy-efficient servers and power supply partly from renewable sources.
- Monitoring and continuous improvement: regular assessment of performance and adjustments to reduce the environmental footprint over the long term.
This collaboration with our web agency Perméable enabled us to combine technical expertise and ecological commitment, for a website that complies with eco-design standards and is resolutely high-performance.
Why eco-design is essential today
The digital sector is expanding rapidly, accounting for a growing share of greenhouse gas emissions. Every website, every online service and every interaction consumes energy and contributes to the global ecological footprint.
Designing an eco-responsible site is essential for :
- Reduce environmental impact: limit energy consumption and CO₂ emissions linked to digital.
- Guaranteeing accessibility and sustainability: offering digital services that are accessible to all, reliable and sustainable over time.
- Aligning our practices with our values: ensuring consistency between our scientific and social mission and our communication tools.
By adopting eco-design, the One Science Montpellier Foundation is affirming its commitment to a more responsible, high-performance and sustainable digital environment, responding to contemporary environmental challenges while preserving the quality and efficiency of its services.