In just a few short years, the business world has seen a seismic shift: over 1,000 companies have now pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions, twice as many as in 2020. What started as a bold vision for a greener economy is rapidly becoming standard operating procedure. The urgency is real, the pressure is on, and companies (large and small) are responding.
But this wave of climate responsibility isn’t just sweeping through factories, supply chains, or logistics. It’s coming for the digital world too. And yes, that includes online marketplaces.
You may not be operating smokestacks or shipping containers, but make no mistake. Your marketplace has a digital carbon footprint. Every user interaction, search query, product listing, and payment transaction consumes energy and contributes to the carbon footprint of digital technologies, an impact that’s growing rapidly and often overlooked. And that energy? More often than not, it's still coming from fossil fuels.
So, where does that leave you? Right at the center of a new kind of climate leadership - digital decarbonization.
Welcome to a conversation that matters not just for the planet, but for your brand, your buyers, your bottom line, and the future of your business: What does carbon footprint mean, and how to reduce a carbon footprint?
What is a digital carbon footprint?
A carbon footprint of websites refers to the total amount of greenhouse gases (primarily CO₂) generated by digital products and services. That includes:
- Hosting your marketplace on energy-hungry servers
- Running backend processes like search, recommendation engines, or transaction logging
- Serving images, videos, and content-heavy pages to users around the globe
- All the devices your users use to access your marketplace (phones, tablets, laptops)
- Third-party integrations like payment gateways, CRMs, or analytics platforms
And let’s not forget the software development lifecycle itself: coding, testing, deploying updates - it all adds up.
In short, the carbon footprint of internet usage is everything that powers your marketplace experience, from the server farms in Finland to the smartphone in your customer’s hand.
And it’s bigger than you think. A single data center can consume as much electricity as a small city. A viral listing on your platform? It could generate thousands of megabytes in traffic within minutes, served by servers running 24/7. All of this contributes to emissions.
The good news? What’s measurable can be improved. And what’s improved can be a serious brand differentiator in today’s eco-conscious market.
Why is it important to reduce your company's carbon footprint?
Reducing carbon footprint in business is fundamental because the world is watching, and so are your customers. Let’s start with the most human part of this equation: your buyers. Today’s consumers are not just passive price-checkers; they're value-driven decision-makers, and sustainability may be one of their buying signals. Consumers actively seek out sustainable products. They want to spend their money with companies that share their values, demonstrate accountability, and take real action on climate change, not just talk.
That’s not a trend. That’s a tidal wave of expectation. Your marketplace doesn’t need to be selling solar panels or bamboo toothbrushes to matter in this space. Whether you run a B2B service platform, a rental marketplace, or a curated ecommerce portal, your environmental impact is part of your value proposition now. And the financial data supports it.
In the UK alone, products displaying the Carbon Trust’s Carbon Reduction Label, a simple visual commitment to reducing digital carbon footprint, reached over £2 billion in sales, with projections (even a decade ago) forecasting that these numbers would swell to £15.2 billion. That’s not virtue signaling. That’s market alignment.
Now let’s zoom out. While the consumer base is evolving, so is the corporate climate landscape. Over 1,000 companies worldwide, including giants like Microsoft, IKEA, and Unilever, have committed to science-based methods to reduce their carbon footprint via initiatives such as the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). These targets are no joke; they’re rigorously validated and aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
This kind of leadership sends a strong message: “Carbon isn’t just an environmental issue - it’s a business metric.
And it’s not just about what you're doing, it's about what you're a part of. Since 1965, there have been just 20 companies reducing their carbon footprint and which have been responsible for global CO₂ emissions. Yes, that’s mostly fossil fuel giants. But every marketplace, every SaaS platform, every digital product either contributes to or offsets this legacy.
You may not be drilling oil, but if your marketplace runs on servers powered by coal-generated electricity and makes no effort to optimize code or infrastructure, you're playing a supporting role in that story.
Reducing your digital carbon emissions puts your business on the right side of history and on the radar of a growing ecosystem of conscious customers, partners, and investors.
It’s a brand move. It’s a trust move. It’s a growth move. And, frankly, it’s the right thing to do.
How to figure out the marketplace’s carbon footprint?
Before you can reduce your digital emissions, you need to know where they're coming from. The first step on how to track carbon footprint is to measure what matters. Tracking your carbon footprint is about understanding the invisible layers of energy consumption that power your online marketplace, from code to cloud.
Here’s how you can measure your carbon footprint in a structured, actionable way:
1. Understand the three scopes of emissions
The Greenhouse Gas Protocol (a widely adopted global framework) breaks emissions into three key categories. And yes, measuring carbon footprint in business means considering all three, even for digital platforms:
- Scope 1: Direct emissions from owned or controlled sources (usually minimal for digital platforms).
- Scope 2: Indirect emissions from the energy you purchase, like electricity for your office or on-premise servers.
- Scope 3: All other indirect emissions across your value chain, this is where the real digital action happens. Think:
- Cloud hosting and CDN services
- API calls and SaaS dependencies
- User devices consume data
- Team travel, hardware purchases, even the coffee machine in the dev room
For most marketplaces, Scope 3 makes up the lion’s share of emissions, and it's also the most complex to measure. But don’t let that stop you. If you're aiming to figure out your carbon footprint or even just measure your carbon footprint accurately, this is where you need to dig in.
2. Audit your cloud infrastructure & hosting
If your marketplace is hosted on AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure, you’ve already got a digital trail. Each of these providers offers tools for figuring out your carbon footprint or dashboards:
- AWS Customer Carbon Footprint Tool
- Google Cloud’s Carbon Footprint Dashboard
- Microsoft Emissions Impact Dashboard
These tools help estimate how much CO₂ is generated by your infrastructure usage, storage, compute, bandwidth, etc., and can often break it down by region or project.
Hosting in regions powered by renewable energy (like Finland or Oregon) can automatically cut emissions without a single line of code changed.
3. Analyze frontend efficiency
Every second your marketplace takes to load, every image that auto-plays, and every kilobyte of JavaScript you send, costs carbon. Page weight directly translates into energy used on the client-side device and the energy required to transmit that data across the network.
Use tools like:
- Website Carbon Calculator – to get a rough estimate of how green your site is
- Google Lighthouse or WebPageTest – to measure performance and uncover bloated assets
- GreenFrame.io – for developer-focused carbon profiling of your code
4. Estimate usage patterns and energy draw
High-traffic marketplaces mean high energy demand. Map your:
- Monthly active users
- Session duration and activity type
- Geographical distribution (important for energy mix by region)
- API request volume
- CDN load (are you serving assets smartly?)
This usage data, combined with cloud infrastructure stats, gives you a dynamic view of energy usage, not just static consumption.
5. Involve third-party experts and tools
Digital sustainability isn’t a solo sport. Tools and services are emerging specifically for digital carbon accounting:
- Sustainable Web Design model – practical guidance on design/development tradeoffs
- Ecograder – automated site audit with sustainability focus
- Planetly, Normative, Greenly – platforms that help businesses calculate and report total emissions, including Scope 3
Better yet, team up with a digital partner that understands both marketplace architecture and sustainability principles (yes, Roobykon can help).
How to reduce your marketplace’s carbon footprint
Once you’ve worked out your carbon footprint, the natural next step is reduction. And the good news? You don’t need to rebuild from scratch to be greener.
Many of the most impactful steps are about strategic optimization, smarter architecture, and thoughtful day-to-day decisions across tech, design, and operations.
1. Choose a green hosting provider
Not all clouds are created equal. Hosting your marketplace on a green hosting provider powered by renewable energy is one of the best ways to reduce your carbon footprint.
Look for:
- Google Cloud Platform – committed to operating on 100% carbon-free energy 24/7 by 2030
- Microsoft Azure – aiming to be carbon negative by 2030
- AWS – targets 100% renewable energy by 2025, with select regions already there
- Green web hosts like Hetzner (in Germany and Finland) or Cloudflare (which offsets its energy use and offers green CDN services)
Choose data center regions closer to your core users. Less data travel = lower energy.
2. Streamline your frontend: less is greener
Every byte your users download requires energy. The leaner your interface, the lower your footprint.
Tactical moves:
- Compress and lazy-load images
- Ditch unused libraries or bloated JS frameworks
- Minify CSS, JS, and HTML assets
- Use system fonts instead of heavy custom typefaces
- Prefer SVGs and web-optimized media formats like WebP
These tips to reduce carbon footprint are low-effort, high-impact; every KB saved means less electricity used across devices, data centers, and networks.
3. Optimize backend architecture
A clean frontend isn’t enough if your backend is wasteful. Apply these strategies to reduce your carbon footprint:
- Serverless or autoscaling infrastructure – Pay only for what you use
- Database query optimization – Reduce CPU and memory strain
- Cache intelligently – Avoid unnecessary recomputation
- Use background jobs and batch processing – Smooth out spikes in demand
- Refactor legacy code – Monoliths can be carbon hogs
Reducing computation is a direct reduction in electricity use. Efficient code is green code.
4. Review third-party integrations
Many platforms rely on a jungle of APIs, tracking tools, plugins, and analytics software, all of which can add unseen emissions. To keep your carbon footprint in check, it’s time to audit what’s running under the hood.
Do a plugin audit:
- Which tools are essential?
- Are there any duplicating efforts (e.g. multiple analytics tags)?
- Are they hosted on clean infrastructure?
- Can you replace with lighter, greener alternatives?
For example, replacing a bloated tracking suite with a privacy-first, low-impact tool like Plausible or Fathom Analytics can drastically reduce network requests and improve data efficiency - smart ideas to reduce carbon footprint without compromising insights.
5. Educate your users & vendors
If you’re a marketplace, your users are part of your footprint too. Empower them to make low-impact decisions:
- Encourage lower-carbon shipping options
- Highlight sustainable vendors or products
- Use nudges in UI to promote low-emission behaviors (e.g., batching purchases)
- Add a sustainability badge or emissions estimate per transaction
Think of your platform not just as a product, but as an ecosystem. Design for low-impact interaction.
6. Offset what you can’t (yet) eliminate
Even the greenest carbon footprint platform will have unavoidable emissions. That’s where offsets come in, as a bridge, not a shortcut.
Consider:
- Verified offset programs via Gold Standard, ClimatePartner, or Carbonfund.org
- Internal policies like green commuting incentives or remote-first operations
- Supporting nature-based solutions like reforestation or soil carbon storage>
Offsetting isn't a substitute for real action, but it completes the cycle when done responsibly.
7. Make it part of your brand
Transparency breeds trust. If you're working to reduce emissions, let your users know:
- Share how you track your carbon footprint and your reduction plan
- Publish your goals and progress
- Add a section in your About or Impact page
- Get certified (Carbon Trust, B Corp, Green Web Foundation badge, etc.)
Sustainability is a story. One that builds brand loyalty, attracts talent, and inspires users to engage with your mission.
How Roobykon Software creates a sustainable platform
We believe that building high-performing marketplaces and respecting planetary boundaries are not mutually exclusive goals; they’re two sides of responsible digital innovation.
Over the years, we've had the opportunity to design and develop marketplaces across industries: from peer-to-peer rentals to educational platforms and niche B2B services. With each project, we’ve seen firsthand why reducing carbon footprint is important, not just for the environment, but for performance, scalability, and long-term brand value. That awareness now informs the way we approach platform development from day one.
Our development philosophy prioritizes efficiency not only in terms of user experience and backend performance but also in terms of resource use. That includes choosing energy-efficient tech stacks, implementing scalable cloud architectures, reducing redundant operations, and helping clients make informed hosting choices that align with low-carbon objectives. We encourage the use of clean, sustainable web design principles, optimize data handling and caching, and remain mindful of the weight every interaction carries, from initial load to daily usage.
We encourage sustainable web design practices and continually seek out things to reduce the carbon footprint at every level of a platform, from initial load to caching, data storage, and API usage.
We also understand that no platform operates in isolation. Your marketplace is part of a much larger network of energy, data, and consumption. What we bring to the table is not a ready-made sustainability solution, but a long-term partnership shaped by practical engineering and responsible growth.
The advantages of reducing the carbon footprint are strategic. Lower emissions often come hand-in-hand with faster performance, reduced hosting costs, and increased trust from conscious consumers and investors.
Our role is to help digital platforms succeed without excess – to run leaner, smarter, and with environmental awareness baked into the build, not bolted on after launch.
