In this blog, we\u2019ll take a closer look at the environmental effects of Shopify themes by using a scientific approach to estimate their carbon emissions.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Background<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
In a significant move for eco-friendly e-commerce, Shopify decommissioned its data servers in 2018<\/a> and transitioned exclusively to Google Cloud. This shift was crucial as Google Cloud meets 100% of its energy consumption needs with renewable energy, making Shopify’s platform almost entirely carbon neutral.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n However, here are some reasons why Shopify websites are not 100% free from carbon emissions:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n 1. Indirect emissions arise from users accessing the site.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n 2. The physical infrastructure, including servers and cooling systems, consumes energy from manufacturing to disposal.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n 3. Despite a significant use of renewable energy, completely eliminating fossil fuel dependency is difficult. Renewable energy systems themselves, such as solar panels and wind turbines, still produce some carbon emissions, though significantly less than fossil fuels.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n There are multiple tools for this, which more or less use the same methodology, i.e., checking the size of the page and then estimating the carbon emissions.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n For writing this blog, we used The Green Web Foundations CO2.js library to estimate the CO2 emissions: https:\/\/developers.thegreenwebfoundation.org\/co2js\/overview\/.<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n CO2.js, by default, uses the Sustainable Web Design (SWD) model to calculate the carbon emissions. The SWD model employs a bottom-up approach, considering data transfer and wider system boundaries for detailed environmental impact assessments. You can read more about the methodology on their website<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n It also considers whether the website uses green hosting and provides a CO2 estimate on that basis. For Shopify which is entirely green hosted, we marked the green hosting metric as true for all themes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n 1. <\/strong>Getting the demo links of all the themes from <\/strong><\/span>Shopify Themes<\/span><\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n We used a simple in-browser scraper and got a list of 230 themes including both free and premium.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n 2. <\/strong>Running the PSI test on all themes to get the page weight.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n CO2.js uses page weight to estimate the CO2 emissions. We used Screaming Frog and the Page Speed Insights API to get the page weight and exported the result in csv.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n 3. <\/strong>Running CO2.js<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n This was run in terminal with a simple Javascript program to run the test in loop for 230 themes.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n Below are the top 10 Shopify themes that release the least amount of carbon emissions as per our test:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\nAnalyzing Shopify Themes for Carbon Emissions<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Methodology:<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.cueforgood.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/breakdown-1.png\")
\r\nEstimating CO2 emissions using CO2.js<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.cueforgood.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-3.png\")
<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.cueforgood.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image-4.png\")
<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nResults<\/strong>\u00a0<\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n