Eco-friendly
If you were not aware, a website is not eco-friendly, it is rather harmful to the environment. The servers behind the websites use a very large source of energy, which is not always renewable energy.
Luckily, in Canada, we have expertise in our data centers that use renewable energy.
All this is thanks to our Canadian servers which mainly use electricity supplied by Hydro Quebec, leader in sustainable development. To make an eco-friendly website when our servers are outside Canada, there are measures to follow, let us present them to you below.
What we validate
Green hosting
To be considered as having an eco-friendly hosting, the host must be on the site of the Green Web Foundation.
CDN
Using a CDN such as Cloudflare can reduce CO2 emissions by up to 9%. Incidentally, Cloudflare is part of the Green Web Foundation.
Analysis
A preliminary analysis of the website can give us the opportunity to look under the hood and optimize the website accordingly.
UI / UX
If the design (UI) and the experience (UX) are simple for the user, it will take him less time to search for information on the website, thus reducing his carbon footprint.
Page weight
The higher the weight of the page, the more the loading speed of the pages will be affected.
Performance
The better the performance of the website, the less the site will pollute.
It's nice to see all these good practices. But what do we do next? We must validate that our optimizations have paid off. To do this, we use analysis tools which tell us if our site is eco-friendly or not.
Our analysis tools
Website Carbon
Website Carbon gives us a result that indicates whether we are a certain percentage (%) more (or less) eco-friendly than the rest of the pages tested.
Ecograder
Ecograder gives us a result that indicates a number out of a 100, with a list of recommendations to improve the results obtained.
Not only are sites developed using the Shopify platform considered as eco-friendly, but the company itself is also considered as such.
They do their best to make sure you can order online, while keeping a very small carbon footprint.
Benefits of 
CDN
Shopify uses Cloudflare as CDN and this is what identifies it as a green host.
Carbon neutral
Shopify is considered carbon neutral since their servers run on renewable energy.
Simplified purchase
Shopify has put a lot of effort into the design and the online shopping experience which reduces the time spent placing an order.
EcoCart
EcoCart is a technology implemented as an app on Shopify and allowing carbon neutral ordering.
Sustainable fund
Shopify has launched an investment fund of $5 million per year in technologies fighting against climate change.
