5 eco-friendly actions as a web developer

On opening this article, I'm guessing you were probably hoping we'd talk about "eco-design," but this topic will be the subject of a dedicated article in the coming months, because it's a complex subject that I often find poorly addressed.

Here I'm simply going to list the actions I've been able to implement in my daily life as an independent developer, some of them recently, and for others, over several years.

This article isn't intended to compare myself to others or to turn our personal commitments into a competition, far from it. I'm writing it with the aim of sharing a personal approach, one that might perhaps give you some ideas for things to implement if that appeals to you, nothing more!

Funding reforestation

Here's an action I started very recently, and one that matters more and more to me. I'm lucky enough to have very comfortable income as a freelancer, and I wanted to start correlating my income with my ecological impact.

The first step was to donate 10% of the profits from sales of my courses to fund tree planting in South American countries.

For your information, I make my donations through the Reforest'Action association

Eventually, I'd like to correlate all of my income (service work) with funding reforestation, but unfortunately that's not yet the case.

No car travel

Probably my decision with the biggest environmental impact on my own scale, but it's also an action that influences my personal life.

I don't have a car, and I also don't have a driver's license, so I do the vast majority of my traveling by public transport (tram, bus, train), or by electric scooter.

It's a constraint, it determines where I can live and sometimes (very rarely) limits my opportunities, but it's a choice I'm proud of and don't regret.

Except when I'm biking my daughter home in the evening, it's 4°C outside and it's raining, I'll admit.

I also sometimes take a plane for professional trips within Europe, and in that case I go through Reforest'Action to try to offset my carbon footprint through reforestation.

Repairing equipment

I try to make my electronic devices last as long as possible, and to repair them when it's possible and within my skill set.

I've already had to replace a power connector or reconnect a wire after taking apart my laptop, it's not necessarily easy, but even in economic terms it's worth it, on top of the ecological impact.

And sometimes it's simply a RAM and storage upgrade that lets you extend the life of the hardware.

Eventually, I'd like to switch to a Fairphone so I can do the same thing with a phone, I'll update this article when that happens!

Buying refurbished or second-hand equipment

I started this year buying some equipment on BackMarket, the product range having grown enormously in recent years, you can order the majority of electronic products on there.

I recently discovered, for example, very good quality microphones and webcams!

It's not the same experience as buying a brand new product (no packaging, for example), you can run into unpleasant surprises, but I'm knocking on wood so far.

Turning down projects

This is my last action, which perhaps doesn't have a real final impact in terms of sustainable development, because many will say that the projects I don't take on, others will take care of instead, and that's probably true.

But as with most of our actions, there's also a "selfish" side to wanting to live at peace with oneself, so I sometimes turn down projects either because the company behind it goes against my values, or because I know the project won't have any positive impact on the world around us.

Of course I'm lucky enough to be able to make this choice, and I sometimes get it wrong in my judgment, about a company or a project, but trying to sort things out is already a step in the right direction!

I hope you enjoyed this article, and see you soon on the blog!