Environmental statement
Although our website plays a part in reducing the need for printed advice and allows us to support businesses more quickly and efficiently, at the Office of the Small Business Commissioner (OSBC) we are aware of the wider environmental impact of our website.
Therefore, we’ve collaborated closely with our web development agency (Connect Internet Solutions) to implement several measures to reduce the environmental impact of our website as part of our website development.
Connect’s ‘Coding for a Greener Planet initiative’ utilises a series of principles and practices that, when combined with cutting-edge technologies, result in a website that uses streamlined code to help reduce its carbon footprint. We have used this initiative as our guide during this process.
The steps we have taken to reduce the environmental impact of our website and positively affect the environmental status are:
- Minimising use of energy-intensive functionalities, such as carousels
- Minimising code duplication
- Optimising file sizes
- Automatic compression & conversion of images
- Use of vector image formats, where possible
- Use of third-party services to host video content
- Avoidance of unnecessary add-ons
- Avoidance of embedded contents
- Minimising render blocking requests
- Enhancing site efficiency for users on all devices and slower networks
Following this detailed review and redevelopment, our refreshed website achieved a 33% increase in mobile performance score and a 22% increase in desktop performance score compared to its previous iteration. As a result, our website typically loads in under 1.1 seconds on desktop devices and in under 1.3 seconds on mobile devices.
Additional improvements
We understand that there are additional steps we can take to reduce our website’s environmental impact further, which include:
- Using a system web-safe font to improve efficiency and reduce energy consumption associated with custom fonts
- Avoid using page redirects as much as possible
- Limit the number of plugins and themes used
We will continue to review these and other suggested improvements quarterly.
At the OSBC we remain dedicated to balancing innovation with environmental responsibility and will continue to work with our partners to do so. Together, we have made a difference for a greener, more sustainable future.
This statement was prepared and last reviewed on 27 November 2025.