Sustainability in software development

Software development is often named as a driver of climate damage. High server activity, coupled with high energy and water consumption, has a negative impact on the ecological footprint. In this context, even software developers can pay attention to sustainability by changing their business practices around energy. The Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN in September 2015 also put the focus on the relevance of clean and affordable energy. For us as software developers, this is a particularly important topic. Find out what options are available and what we are already paying attention to at staffitpro in this blog article.

The term "digital sustainability" refers to sustainable actions in the digital sector, for example in the form of reducing CO2 emissions or using renewable energies. In software development, very high electricity consumption can be significantly reduced in this way. In Germany alone, this has risen steadily in IT between 2016 and 2020, as a study by the Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability on the online platform statista shows. The institute, headquartered in Berlin, primarily researches the compatibility of sustainable solutions from the digital age.

At staffitpro, we are aware that as we grow, so does our ecological footprint. Reason enough to make our work more sustainable. We save an enormous amount of data and CO2 by using reusable software systems and avoiding redundancies. Efficient codes ensure smooth software performance at the same time.

With partnerships and collaboration, sustainable action is promoted all the more strongly - a concern that the United Nations also supports and has therefore defined as the 17th Sustainable Development Goal. For example, we rely on our long-standing partnership with AWS (Amazon Web Services). Apart from many other benefits, the collaboration enables us to achieve our sustainability goals. Thanks to the use of AWS servers, we save a whopping 7.8 megatons of CO2 per year. And that's not all: with our server efficiency 3.6 times higher than the average of U.S. enterprise data centers surveyed, we are also reducing our energy consumption.

Based on our collaboration with the Amazon Sustainability Data Initiative (ASDI), we are realizing time and cost savings in data analysis in particular. The initiative also supports innovative research and sustainable projects in developing countries.

As you can see: Thanks to modern technologies and methods, it is also possible to act sustainably in IT. Sustainability and IT are therefore not mutually exclusive. In this industry in particular, environmentally friendly (re)business is important - and feasible. There are many different ways - not just for IT-heavy businesses, but for all businesses - to leave a smaller environmental footprint. You can find out more about these options and what else there is to say about sustainability in our other blog articles or on our LinkedIN page. Have fun browsing!