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Summary – In light of the rise of responsible digital practices and ESG requirements, the carbon footprint of IT infrastructures – often underestimated – accounts for 4% of global emissions, 80% of which occurs during operations. Poorly optimized code (+18–30% wasted consumption), oversized architectures, or ill-suited technologies (up to ×11 impact) carry financial and regulatory risks.
Solution: Green IT audit, software eco-design, and infrastructure recommendations (dynamic scaling, committed hosting providers) to combine performance, agility and sustainability.
In a world where digital transformation is essential, its environmental impact is becoming a growing concern for IT departments, business leaders, and boards of directors alike.
How can you combine technological performance with environmental responsibility? How can digital systems serve as a competitive advantage—without increasing your organization’s carbon footprint? In this context, Green IT (or sustainable digital practices) emerges as a strategic area of focus, especially for Swiss companies aligning their roadmap with ESG criteria.
At Edana, we support organizations in designing tailor-made software solutions, incorporating an eco-friendly, scalable, and durable approach when aligned with their business strategy.
The Often Underestimated Environmental Impact of Digital Systems
Despite its virtual nature, digital activity has a very real environmental footprint. Today, it accounts for approximately 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions, a figure that continues to rise.
At the enterprise level, IT infrastructure—servers, cloud environments, applications, data flows—has become a major energy consumer, often with little visibility or oversight.
Key figures to keep in mind:
- 80% of a digital service’s environmental impact occurs during its usage phase.
- Poorly optimized code throughout its lifecycle can lead to high energy costs without delivering real value.
- An over-provisioned server or poorly designed architecture can result in a digital carbon footprint equivalent to that of dozens of users.
- The choice of technologies directly affects not only system performance, but also the system’s environmental impact.
These insights highlight the importance of making strategic decisions from the earliest design phases. A well-designed IT ecosystem is typically simple to manage, high-performing, and—naturally—less polluting.
In the next section, we’ll explore how Green IT can also drive growth and efficiency in your organization.
Edana: strategic digital partner in Switzerland
We support companies and organizations in their digital transformation
Green IT: A Strategic Lever, Not a Constraint
Adopting a Green IT mindset means rethinking the real necessity of every technical resource: server processes, API calls, data volumes, update frequencies…
This approach ties directly into broader goals such as performance optimization, cost reduction, and infrastructure resilience.
It’s not just an environmental commitment—it’s an operational and strategic lever. A leaner system is faster, easier to maintain, and more adaptable to change. And as ESG regulations gain traction, it can also become a genuine competitive edge.
Lightweight, Scalable Technologies: A Foundation for Responsible IT
At Edana, we prioritize modern, high-performance, and widely adopted architectures. As it happens, many of these technologies are also resource-efficient. Some are inherently so, as they are based on non-blocking principles that allow them to take advantage of system idle times—significantly reducing server resource requirements.
These technologies enable the creation of applications that are not only sustainable and resilient but also capable of adapting to future usage without overconsumption—and in some cases, with underconsumption of resources.
Many companies have adopted these technologies to improve their agility, carbon footprint, high-traffic performance, and infrastructure maintainability. For example, both Walmart and Decathlon have migrated their back-end infrastructures to the Node.js runtime—based on JavaScript—which is one of these aforementioned technologies.
We work with technologies such as:
- Node.js – Fast, non-blocking execution, ideal for real-time and high-intensity systems.
- NestJS – A modular framework that promotes clean, maintainable code structure.
- TypeScript – A typed language that strengthens code quality, reduces bugs, and simplifies long-term maintenance.
- Optimized databases – PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis—selected based on your business logic and performance needs.
- Responsible cloud infrastructure – We work with Swiss (or European, when appropriate) providers committed to reducing digital carbon emissions, with dynamic resource management (autoscaling, sleep mode, etc.).
This technical foundation allows you to balance innovation, efficiency, and responsible software development, with no compromise on performance.
Green IT in Action: Practical Technical Levers
Whether you’re building your IT infrastructure internally or with a partner, here are some practical Green IT techniques to consider:
- Optimizing server requests (caching, aggregation, pagination) to reduce network load and CPU consumption.
- Compressing and converting media (WebP, SVG, lazy loading) to streamline front-end interfaces.
- Modularizing code to eliminate redundancy and promote component reusability.
- Intelligent data management: automated archiving, clean-up routines, and differentiated storage based on data criticality.
- Offloading heavy tasks asynchronously, using job queues or background workers.
The use of naturally scalable and lightweight technologies, like JavaScript runtimes such as Node.js and its many libraries and frameworks, plays a major role. The result? Fewer servers, leaner code, faster execution, and easier maintenance over time.
This last point is covered in more detail in the next section.
Remember: even minor optimizations can have a substantial impact across a large infrastructure or user base.
Non-Blocking Technologies and Efficiency: A Natural Synergy
Non-blocking technologies like Node.js offer asynchronous execution that requires significantly fewer resources while maintaining high performance.
What does that mean in practice?
- Fewer active threads = less processor load
- Applications can handle more concurrent users with fewer servers
- Greater elasticity in cloud environments, resulting in lower costs and lower energy consumption
This kind of infrastructure design aligns perfectly with ESG-driven digital strategies that aim to combine growth and responsibility.
A Strategic Advisory Approach Tailored to Your Priorities
To successfully implement sustainable, eco-responsible IT, partnering with a digital consulting firm can help you select the best technologies and architectures—powerful, durable, and results-oriented.
At Edana, for example, we don’t apply one-size-fits-all models. Instead, we incorporate Green IT principles where relevant, depending on your business goals and your organization’s digital maturity.
Our support may include:
- A technical audit focused on efficiency (CPU usage, storage, data flow, processing).
- Architecture recommendations for scalable and lean infrastructures.
- A framework for eco-friendly software design: reusable components, decoupled layers, streamlined business logic.
- Custom dashboards that include energy performance or carbon impact indicators if needed.
Everything we do is geared toward helping you achieve your performance, agility, and sustainability goals.
Cloud and Green IT: Conditions for Sustainable Digital Systems
Cloud computing is often viewed as an inherently eco-friendly solution. But its real impact depends on several key factors:
- Your provider’s credentials (certified data centers, renewable energy sources, strong ESG policies).
- How your architecture is dimensioned (autoscaling, deactivation of idle environments).
- How you orchestrate your services (containerization, serverless architecture, on-demand functions).
A well-managed cloud infrastructure can meaningfully reduce your digital carbon footprint—but only if it’s designed with rigor and sustainability in mind.
ESG and Responsible Digital Practices: Expectations Are Rising
ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) criteria are playing an increasingly important role in how organizations are evaluated—including in the tech and software sectors.
More and more businesses are required to document their responsible digital practices, whether in CSR reporting or as part of public or international tenders.
Integrating Green IT into your digital initiatives is not just a matter of values—it’s becoming a compliance and competitiveness issue.
Ready to Transition to Eco-Performance?
Adopting a Green IT approach doesn’t mean sacrificing performance. On the contrary—it’s a way to align your business and technical goals with a responsible, optimized use of digital resources.
At Edana, we believe high-performing software systems stem from well-informed technology choices, lean architectures, and clear governance. When sustainability is one of your priorities, we provide concrete, measurable solutions aligned with your ESG ambitions.
Looking to build a more responsible digital system—without compromising performance? Let’s talk.
