Energy is a resource just like money or time, and like any resource we care to keep around, it’s critical to spend it wisely. In layman’s terms, and busy people’s terms - every time we ask a user’s devices to send or receive a piece of information, it uses energy. Sometimes that’s very visible and obvious, other times it happens behind the scenes. Here are two examples of sustainable development practices that can be implemented behind the magicians curtain of 1’s and 0’s.

New is out of vogue, vintage and used is in. This year ASOS have launched Thrift + a scheme that allows users to pack up and send back clothes they no longer wear to be re-sold by the brand, in return they receive credit to keep shopping.² Recycling is now everywhere, because it needs to be as natural resources begin to dwindle. Businesses are racing to lead and conquer the new emerging circular economy.

Developers and designers don’t need to wait for Vogue’s approval; however, they’ve been recycling and sharing code since the dawn of pong.³ This is because code takes time to write, and to refine. One of the reasons that the internet, and technology in general, has been able to explode at the pace it has, is because of open-source code. In fact, Synopsis’ 2022, Open Source Security and Risk Analysis Report (OSSRA) found that 70% of code used to build the most popular sites on the internet is from open-source repositories.⁴ Meaning that others can pick it up, improve it, use it and make it available for the next person without fear of being accused of being uncool.

Help others to avoid reinventing the wheel, and wasting time. Make your code available online for others to use where you can. Share how you overcome tricky challenges. Internally, build a repository that is organised, easy to search and well understood, to save your team time and money by enabling them to repurpose code wherever possible.

It’s key to ensure that code is therefore written with reuse in mind. This means applying best practices knowing that you will see this work again, and what you don’t do now will need doing later. This includes ensuring code is efficient, appropriately minified and accessible. This is a great way to boost motivation to ensure best practice gets followed, and if done just right, can save your wider design teams from needing to repeat the same feedback. This leaves more time for creating new, delightful and impactful features that in turn can be added to the repository. Your projects can then better benefit from the wisdom of the projects before them.