Getting Started with Digital Sustainability in 2025: Five Actions for Marketers to Score Quick Wins for Their Business

A new year offers an opportunity for a renewed focus on your business’s sustainability goals or even taking those first few steps to show your commitment and get some quick wins.

Marketing can play a powerful role in supporting your business’s sustainability goals. From optimising digital activities to ensuring campaigns align with ESG objectives, Marketing can drive significant change while enhancing performance.

While many businesses focus on sustainability in operations or supply chains, digital activities often fly under the radar. Yet, digital marketing, websites, and online content significantly contribute to emissions. The good news? They’re also some of the easiest areas to address, offering quick wins for both the planet and your bottom line.
2025 is the year to get reducing your digital carbon footprint on the agenda. Here are five actions to get started and create a tangible impact.

Key Takeaways

Digital marketing has a hidden carbon footprint – Websites, emails, and social media contribute to business emissions, often overlooked in sustainability strategies. Addressing digital sustainability can significantly reduce environmental impact while improving performance.
A poorly optimised digital presence affects more than just emissions – Slow websites, inefficient email marketing, and heavy digital assets can harm user experience, SEO rankings, security, and brand reputation.
Quick wins for marketers can drive immediate impact – Actions like switching to green hosting, optimising website performance, streamlining email marketing, and reducing unnecessary data-heavy content can cut emissions and enhance marketing effectiveness.
Sustainability is a competitive differentiator – Businesses with strong ESG credentials are more attractive to customers, partners, and procurement teams. A sustainable digital presence can support brand reputation, sales, and compliance with growing ESG expectations.
Every small change adds up – By optimising digital activities, marketing teams can play a crucial role in reducing carbon emissions while improving efficiency, engagement, and long-term business success.

Digital Marketing’s Carbon Footprint

Marketing plays a crucial role in business growth, but it also contributes to your company’s environmental impact. Digital activities like website visits, email campaigns and social media uploads consume energy—often from fossil-fuel-powered data centres. Under ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) frameworks, these emissions typically fall under Scope 3: indirect emissions from a company’s value chain.

For example:

Websites contribute 3.7% of global emissions, equivalent to the aviation industry. For example, an unoptimised website with 50,000 monthly page views can produce over 500kg of CO2 annually—the equivalent emissions as driving an electric car over 10,000 miles.
A single email with a large attachment can produce up to 50g of CO2. A small business of 20 people can send over 150,000 emails per year, which would generate the same emissions as driving a petrol car approximately 1200 miles.
According to recent data, the average social media user generates around 229 kg of CO2e annually from their digital content consumption, representing roughly 3-4% of an individual’s total carbon footprint. How your business publishes content can have a significant impact.

See our article on the Environmental Impact of Websites: Why SMEs Should Care for a more detailed understanidng on this.

An unoptimised digital presence can also create unseen business challenges beyond an increased carbon footprint

In short, a website optimised to reduce its carbon footprint is a lightweight, high-performance, secure website that can enhance customer perception of your business, as well as support ESG criteria within procurement exercises. Here’s why:

User Experience and Customer Satisfaction

Unoptimised media and code creates a sluggish website, not only draining more energy but can also put off customers. If a user encounters a slow-loading page, they are 32% more likely to hit that back button and click on one of the many competitors in a search result page. This impacts the bottom line, making it harder to retain customers and convert traffic into sales.

SEO and Organic Reach

Unoptimised media and code create a sluggish website, not only draining more energy but also putting off customers. If a user encounters a slow-loading page, they are 32% more likely to hit that back button and click on one of the many competitors in a search result page. This impacts the bottom line, making it harder to retain customers and convert traffic into sales.

Security Risks

Security vulnerabilities can occur when website systems are not updated regularly, which can lead to data breaches, loss of customer trust, and expensive reparations. SMEs must adopt regular updates and patches to secure their digital assets.

Customer Reputation

For most businesses, their digital presence is the first customer touchpoint. A business that ignores its digital sustainability risks appearing out of touch with modern consumer values, especially as eco-conscious purchasing behaviour becomes more prevalent. Research shows that consumers prefer brands prioritising environmental responsibility, with 66% of global consumers willing to pay more for sustainable products.

ESG in Procurement

Procurement processes are increasingly tied to sustainability, and businesses that fail to optimise their digital presence may be marked down in competitive bids. In fact, companies now evaluate the environmental impact of their suppliers, and those with weaker sustainability credentials—such as an inefficient, high-emission website—may be left behind in favour of more responsible alternatives.

Marketing departments have an incredible opportunity to drive impactful change. By optimising digital activities, they can reduce emissions, improve performance, and align with sustainability goals.

Five Digital Sustainability Quick Wins for Marketers in 2025

There are many actions a business can take to reduces its digital carbon footprint and improve performance, but these initial steps are the vital and relatively low cost and friction options.

1. Understand Your Digital Impact

Why it Matters: Before you can reduce emissions, you need to know where they come from. Auditing your digital activities provides a baseline and identifies the biggest opportunities for improvement. Think of this as reading your energy meter before making your home more efficient.
Action: Use one of the many digital carbon calculators available online to give you an understanding of the carbon footprint of your website and digital marketing.

2. Switch to Green Hosting

Why it Matters: Hosting accounts for a significant share of website-related emissions. By switching to a renewable energy-powered provider, you can cut your website’s carbon footprint by up to 30%. Think of green hosting as switching your home power suppliers to one that uses renewable sources—it’s cleaner and just as effective.
Action: Use tools like Green Web Foundation to find a certified green hosting provider. Many offer comparable pricing to traditional hosts, with similar or better performance and features. Be aware that not all green web hosts are equally green, with some leverage offsets over genuinely renewably sourced energy.

3. Optimise Your Website for Performance

Why it Matters: An unoptimised website uses more server resources, increasing energy consumption and bounce rates. Faster-loading websites improve both sustainability and performance across the board. Optimising a website can reduce its energy use by up to 50%, potentially saving many 100kgs of CO2 yearly.
Action: Compress images, enable caching, and streamline code to reduce server loads. Tools like Google PageSpeed Insights can identify areas for improvement.

4. Streamline Email Marketing

Why it Matters: Email campaigns often include redundant recipients or data-heavy email designs, increasing energy use unnecessarily. Sending one fewer email to 10,000 people saves the equivalent CO2 of driving 15 miles.
Actions: Remove inactive subscribers from your email lists. Rethink designs, focusing on graphic or text-based designs rather than image-heavy templates. Consolidate campaigns to avoid sending multiple emails unnecessarily, saving marketing time as well as energy.

5. Optimise Social Media Content

Why it Matters: Videos and high-resolution images on social platforms require significant data transfers, contributing to emissions. For example, YouTube’s emissions of 10 million tons of CO2 emissions annually highlights how scaling down video-heavy campaigns can have an outsized impact on sustainability.
Actions: Standardise the compression of videos and images before uploading them. Considering simpler or more graphic design or editing styles. Repurpose content across platforms to reduce production needs. Limit autoplay videos or provide text-based alternatives.

Additional Long-Term Actions

Educate Your Team

Train your marketing team on sustainable practices, from optimising content to choosing eco-friendly tools. A well-informed team ensures sustained progress.

Build a Sustainable Website

Redesign your website to use lighter code, fewer plugins, and optimised media to minimise resource usage. Consider adopting a design style that maximises and emphasises its low-carbon intentions. Image and video have been heavily overused in website design purely because modern devices and internet connections support them, without much consideration for user experience. This offers an opportunity to differentiate from competitors.

Audit Third-Party Tools

Review digital tools and platforms (e.g., analytics, CRM, email) for their sustainability credentials. Prioritise suppliers that align with your ESG goals. Most digital tools are completely overkill for the majority of business requirements.

Adopt Green Digital Practices in Ads

Streamline targeting to reduce unnecessary impressions and focus on high-impact campaigns, especially for video-heavy ads. This will certainly reduce ad spend costs and refocus your efforts.

Upgrade and Manage Digital Hardware

Energy-Efficient Devices: Recycle outdated, energy-intensive devices like servers, laptops, and monitors with energy-efficient alternatives.
Lifecycle Management: Extend the lifespan of hardware through regular maintenance, upgrades, and repairs. Repurpose old devices for secondary uses or donate them to reduce waste.
Ethical Disposal: Ensure end-of-life devices are recycled responsibly through certified e-waste recycling programs to prevent landfill contribution.
Reduce Over-provisioning: Evaluate whether all hardware is necessary; consolidate underused equipment to save energy and reduce costs.

Optimise Office IT Infrastructure

Cloud-Based Solutions: Transition to cloud services powered by renewable energy instead of relying on on-premises data centres.
Energy Management Systems: Implement energy-saving features like automatic device shutdowns and power-saving modes across office IT infrastructure.

The Benefits of Digital Sustainability

Hopefully, by this point, the benefits speak for themselves. Taking action on digital sustainability isn’t just good for the planet—it’s good for business. In summary, here are the compelling benefits your marketing team can achieve with even a minimal investment of time and resources:

Operational Efficiency: Streamlined marketing and websites require fewer resources, saving energy and reducing ongoing maintenance costs for digital tools and platforms.
Improved Marketing Performance: Faster websites improve SEO and conversion rates, while optimised campaigns lead to higher engagement and ROI.
Enhanced Brand Reputation: Demonstrating sustainability commitments builds trust with eco-conscious customers and partners, giving you a competitive edge in procurement processes.
Compliance with ESG Goals: Addressing digital emissions directly supports Scope 3 reduction targets, making it easier to meet ESG reporting requirements.
Employee Engagement: Engaging your team in meaningful sustainability efforts improves morale and reinforces your brand’s mission and values.

Get Started!

Every small change can make a difference, and cumulatively they compound over time to big impact. By starting with these quick wins and building on them, your marketing team can reduce your company’s environmental impact while boosting performance in 2025.

At EasyGreen, we know that the sustainable option needs to be easy and attractive. That’s why we remove the usual frictions to reducing the carbon footprint of your website. From measuring your digital impact to optimising your website, we’ll help you every step of the way and we offer a 30 day money-back guarantee on our services. Ready to get started? Contact us today!

At EasyGreen, we know that the sustainable option needs to be easy and attractive. That’s why we remove the usual frictions to reducing your digital carbon footprint. From measuring your digital impact to optimising your website, we’ll help you every step of the way and we offer a 30 day money-back guarantee on our services.