A Budapest-based climate-tech startup has released Hungary’s first comprehensive audit of the digital carbon footprint of leading e-commerce websites, highlighting the unseen environmental cost of online shopping.
Carbon.Crane evaluated the environmental impact of 16 major domestic webshops, including household names like IKEA, Telekom, Libri, and Media Markt. The results reveal that even routine website visits contribute to carbon emissions.
While the convenience of online shopping is well known, the environmental implications of merely browsing webshops remain under the radar. High-resolution images, autoplay videos, and tracking scripts all increase CO₂e emissions.
From website page loads to pollution
The audit employed a proprietary browser extension developed by Carbon.Crane, validated by Bureau Veritas. The extension not only measures emissions per browsing route — from homepage to product page to checkout — but also identifies opportunities to optimize and reduce the environmental footprint.
The methodology followed an identical journey for each webshop: loading the homepage, navigating to a product list, viewing an individual product, and adding it to the cart. The total measured emissions amounted to 233,943 kilograms of CO₂e, the equivalent of nearly one million laundry cycles or 732 round trips between Budapest and Paris by car.
Carbon footprint leaders in Hungary
Among the 16 webshops, Pepita, Media Markt, and Kifli demonstrated the most efficient digital footprints, with emissions ranging between 1.15–1.29 grams CO₂e per typical customer journey. In contrast, IKEA’s digital path emitted 3.21 grams, over six times more than the most efficient player.
Interestingly, the retailer with the highest and lowest emissions across different sections of their site turned out to be the same company, underlining how inconsistent digital optimization can be within the same platform.
- Pepita – 1,15 CO₂e
- Media Markt – 1,22 CO₂e
- Kifli – 1,29 CO₂e
- Euronics – 1,30 CO₂e
- Auchan – 1,58 CO₂e
- Decathlon – 1,78 CO₂e
- Bookline – 1,79 CO₂e
- Tesco – 1,96 CO₂e
- iPon – 1,97 CO₂e
- Rossmann – 1,99 CO₂e
- Alza – 2,06 CO₂e
- Telekom – 2,07 CO₂e
- BestBite – 2,10 CO₂e
- Libri – 2,59 CO₂e
- Aqua – 2,83 CO₂e
- Ikea – 3,21 CO₂e
The cost and opportunity of inaction
To contextualize these numbers, Carbon.Crane simulated 120 million customer journeys annually, a realistic volume for top-tier e-commerce sites in Hungary. For the highest-emitting platforms, this would result in hundreds of tonnes of CO₂e each year, simply from website usage.
The company estimates an average reduction potential of nearly 20%, with some websites capable of cutting emissions by up to 50%, primarily by optimizing images, compressing scripts, and eliminating redundant animations, all without sacrificing user experience.
