Tim Frick

Bo Peter 00:12
Hello and welcome to a very exciting episode of Marketing for What Matters, in which I speak to the founder and president of Mightybytes, Tim Frick. Tim leads Mightybytes, which is a digital agency focused on creating environmentally friendly and socially responsible digital products and services, including websites. In our discussion, Tim emphasizes the need for collaboration and regulatory guidance to drive change in the industry. More specifically, Tim highlights the role of tools that he’s created, like eco grader and the W 3c web sustainability guidelines, which he’s helped create through a coalition of web designers and marketers, and how those guidelines help individuals and businesses make their websites more sustainable. Tim also emphasized the importance of storytelling, yet again, and communication inspiring action and creating a better future in our conversation, Tim chat discusses the challenges and importance of adopting sustainability web design practices and how accessibility has led the way to build build a more sustainable internet. Finally, Tim also explores the broader issues created by the web, such as water usage, which is also becoming a huge problem in the world of artificial intelligence, social and economic problems and the gig economy. He discusses the need for businesses to blend purpose and profit, exactly what we’re here for, marketing, for what matters and shares examples of companies that have successfully incorporated sustainability in their business modes. Tim also highlights the responsible tech advocacy Toolkit, which he’s helped made, and how companies can choose more responsible vendors for their tech and design meets. So listen up for an exciting conversation with Tim Frick. My name is Bo Peter laden, and I’ll see you in the episode. Hello everybody. Welcome to the marketing for what matters podcast today I have Tim Frick on the show. Tim is a pioneer in sustainable web design, and he’s the founder of Mightybytes, a doodle agency dedicated to creating environmentally friendly and socially responsible digital products. He has authored the book designing for sustainability, and co authored the W 3c web sustainability guidelines. Tim was inspired to launch Mightybytes after realizing the significant environmental impact of the internet and digital technologies, which often goes unnoticed. And on top of this, Tim is a strong advocate for sustainable web design practices, and has been instrumental in developing those guidelines and tools that will help us measure and improve the environmental impact of websites, and thus, how much CO two, etc, is being admitted. Tim, thanks so much for being here. I’m very excited for today’s conversation.

Tim Frick 03:01
Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it

Bo Peter 03:05
fantastic. Well, let’s jump right into it. Something that we’re always really interested to know from our guests is, how did they get to the point where they are today and have that passion for environmental sustainability? So with that in mind, what led you to launch Mightybytes, and how did that journey begin for you?

Tim Frick 03:20
Yeah, sure. I think I’d love to say that I was worried about the environmental impact of websites from day one, but Mightybytes was launched in 1998 and that was not a thing. I was, in fact, it wasn’t even on my radar. I’ve been, you know very much. I was lucky enough to grow up in a rural area with ample access to nature. And so that definitely formed kind of the human that I became later in life. And as a digital professional, you know, that passion for environmental justice and the environment in general was really kind of woven into everything that I wanted to do professionally. And so as part of that we wanted when we started mighty white, so we wanted to start working with mission driven organizations. And so from the beginning, we were wanting to help organizations that were doing the right thing, both socially and environmentally. And that was kind of an edict from the beginning of starting the company way back when, all the way through to becoming a B Corp in 2011 and then, you know, really kind of doubling down on all of our efforts after that. I think when Mightybytes was starting, it was everybody was on a mad dash to get on the internet, and had been for a few years at that point, and I was seeing a lot of purpose driven organizations like charities and nonprofits and even some educational institutions being kind of left behind. People were throwing money left and right at this project, in that project, but very rarely were those projects impact focused, which we is the word we would probably use now. Back then, that wasn’t necessarily a huge. Were. But you know that, I think, you know, we really just wanted to kind of help those organizations first and foremost, and so that was really where I put all my efforts, in business development, and all my efforts and just trying to align my company’s values with not only my own personal values, but also organizations that we wanted to work with to collectively create, you know, positive social and environmental impact,

Bo Peter 05:23
absolutely, I mean, based on what you said, like the word impact and impactful businesses has surely been growing in use of the lexicon when it comes to sustainability in the last years. But everybody defines it a little bit different, just like how everybody defines sustainability, what it means for them in a little bit differently. What does it mean for you?

Tim Frick 05:43
Ted? Yeah, I think I mean, that is a good point. And the words that we use to define that have changed drastically over the past 20 years or so, and there’s still a lot of confusion around that. In our work with the W, 3c, we’re kind of getting pushed back on any of the kind of social components of sustainability, or any of the economic components of sustainability, where everyone wants to just focus singularly on carbon emissions, and that carbon tunnel vision can be a little bit dangerous, because then it usually means you’re ignoring all the other stuff. And so for me, I define the most recent terminology that is, you know, bandied about is it most often is, is ESG, although I don’t love that, I still, you know, it’s a it’s, it was, it kind of got its grounds in the financial markets and stuff like that. It still denotes paying attention to the big picture of economic, social and environmental issues all as a greater, you know, kind of part of sustainability, or the umbrella of sustainability. So I definitely see all of those things as interdependent with one another and intersectional. And what you do to the planet, you do to the people kind of thing, and so I think that’s really incredibly important. And you know, those folks who are just solely focused on on environmental impact may do so at the detriment of some of the others. You know, without realizing it, oftentimes

Bo Peter 07:13
you have been very involved the W, 3c, web sustainability guidelines. What were the origins behind that? And what were your motivations to support this initiative?

Tim Frick 07:23
Sure, yeah, so when we became a B Corp, it’s, I’ll probably go back to that, which was 2011 around that same time. You know, it’s a pretty rigorous process. If you’re familiar with it, I think you just said your company is going through it, or has gone through it and, and it’s, it’s, it definitely was eye opening where we thought we were doing right in all these areas. We realized that we had a lot of work to do yet. And I think that’s a very common thing where people go through the assessment for the first time and realize, oh, there’s a lot of things I could be doing better, and there’s a lot of things that I could be, you know, paying attention to that I maybe not and and for us that came, that happened at a time when the very first reports about the environmental impact of the internet were starting to come out. And so, like that first one I remember seeing was in 2009 but, you know, slowly there was this kind of snowball effect of like, oh, suddenly people are starting to pay attention to this. And more reports are coming out, and we’re like, Huh, that’s the thing that we build for a living as a company. So maybe we should look into what that means, especially with this newfound, you know, kind of B Corp lens that we’re looking at everything through. And so we started thinking about how we could be more effective and more sustainable and more efficient and more performant, and in the way that we design and build digital products and services for our clients as well as our own. And so we, we launched a tool called Eco grader. In 2013 we created this manifesto, like in 2012 which really didn’t do anything so, but it was a good, you know, kind of process for us to go through, to kind of wrap our heads around this. And then at that same time, I met someone from the World Wide Web Consortium who encouraged, encouraged me to start a community group, which was relatively new at the time for the W 3c and community groups are open to anyone. You don’t have to be a W 3c member. Anyone can join um, and they’re usually, you know, kind of convening together around a common topic. And so he was like, you, you know, you’re really passionate about this web sustainability stuff. Why not? You know, put a group together around that. And so we did. We launched that group in 2013 and really, you know, way back then, there was just, it was just a place to share links with people who had similar interests. Honestly, there it didn’t go much beyond that, because there wasn’t that much to go beyond. I mean, there wasn’t, it wasn’t where we’re at now. You know, that was 11 years ago now, um, and so, you know, it was at first just a very loosely knit, held together sharing of links. Through the community site interface. And then in 2020 the pandemic hit, and everybody went online full time and and suddenly, the trickling of resources and reports that you were seeing about the internet’s environmental impact started, you know, the floodgates open, and there was like, all this information about, like, Oh, we’re spending all of our time online, and that’s increasing the environments and internet’s environmental impact by this much and and so our group started growing in membership, and a lot more conversations were being like, had had about, like, what can we do about this? And by that point, I had written, written, designing for sustainability, and had a pretty clear idea of what the solutions look like, or potential solutions, at least. And so having those conversations with other community group members, we kind of decided that it was time to start having monthly meetings and talking about what some guidelines might look like. And so I did a lot of recruiting, and we’ve been having monthly meetings ever since, and it’s been a collaboration for people from around the world, you know, contributing to the guidelines. And you know, really been an incredibly collaborative and very inspiring experience that started, like I said, somewhere around 2021 and then we launched the guidelines in 2023 the very first draft, and we’re now on the seventh draft, and are looking for ways to thinking about getting on the standards track at the W, 3c, so they they can actually become more ingrained into the way people design and build websites and such. I know that was a long, long winded way of getting to your answer, your answer to your question, but I think it was important to provide that context. Now Absolutely

Bo Peter 11:43
I appreciate you doing that. So let’s say someone’s going to develop their website, or they have a website they want to make it better. You mentioned a fantastic tool that you have that’s ecograder. I believe that’s it’s eco grader.com is that right? Yep,

Tim Frick 11:59
yep, yep, E, C, O, G, R, A, D, E, R, Yep,

Bo Peter 12:02
there we go. So eco grader.com, you can go to there. You can insert your your website. You get an automatic report on how your website’s working. It’s fantastic. How can someone both engage with that as well as the guidelines that you’ve written to essentially make a better website? You know, help paint that picture for someone who might be listening right now. Sure, yeah,

Tim Frick 12:24
yeah. The W, 3c documentation is, is that, you know, the guidelines are, like, 300 pages, or something like that. There’s almost 100 guidelines at this point that that cover UX design, web development, hosting and infrastructure, product management, business strategy, like, it’s a wide range of topics and a wide range of guidelines. So, you know, if you’re coming in from one of those angles, let’s say you’re a product manager and you don’t know maybe a lot about web development, you know, you probably don’t want to know the deep down and dirty kind of, you know, nuances of minifying JavaScript or something like that. Like, you want to know what the value that comes from that is, but you probably want to know a little bit more about, like, what are more sustainable project management practices? Or, how can I manage my product more sustainably over time, that kind of thing. And so the in its current form, the guidelines on the W, 3c, site are really just one long document, and it’s hard to read. So we created a JSON file, and anybody can pull that JSON file into any site. So there have been a number of different sites that have pulled the guidelines individually based on unique perspectives and such. And so we created one of those at sustainable web design.org which is tagged and categorized so that people can kind of create their own learning journeys through the guidelines. The guidelines, like I said, there’s almost 100 of them and and it’s 300 pages worth of content, so it can be a little bit intimidating to the uninitiated. And so hopefully, by you know, I think website sustainability might be another URL that uses that. And anyway, we created sustainable web design.org like that, so that people could kind of track their own course and use those guidelines. Eco grader, on the other hand, was really meant to be, at first, an awareness building tool. We, as I mentioned earlier, we launched it in 2013 so it’s been around for as long as the W 3c group has been around, but we’ve been slowly, kind of creating more features and adding to that and supporting it over over the years, and we really ramped that up right around the same time that we were working on the guidelines. And the next version of the Eco grader that we’re working on will have some of the guidelines integrated directly, right into it, so you’ll be able to, you know, put your url, and get a report on how that URL performs from a sustainability perspective, and then get some, you know, direct actionable feedback on that that is aligned with the web sustainability guidelines.

Bo Peter 14:54
Amazing. And in preparation for this, this call you had provided me some, uh. Some other places to look for websites that are doing this effectively. You mentioned the Low Carbon showcase, which has a number of of places of websites doing this properly. You know what’s and that’s great to see. I like that you use. You’re already thinking, or you have thought about, how individuals can go look at those guidelines and make them useful, because, indeed, a 300 page document is is quite overwhelming. I looked at them as well, and it was like, oh, geez, what do I do now? I think with eco grader, it’s it also helps. You know, like I said, if I’m redesigning my website, I want to know just what, what can I do now? And I think that’s, it’s a great, great place to start, and I love that you’re making that additional next. Yeah,

Tim Frick 15:48
I think the simplest way to describe the difference between the two is, eco grader is focused on the product, whereas sustainable web design is focused on the discipline. So if you’re a UX designer, you can go to sustainable web design.org and get very specific UX design recommendations on how to improve your discipline to be more in line with the web sustainability guidelines, whereas eco grader looks at the product based on what you know can be gleaned from a publicly available URL and gives you a bunch of suggestions across those disciplines. I know you.

Bo Peter 16:21
Again, we prepared a little bit for this, and you gave me an answer for why sustainable web design is such a crucial issue against climate change. Well, why do you think? Or yeah, let’s get into why is that so? Yeah, I think how do we get to this better place?

Tim Frick 16:38
If memory serves, in the notes we were taking in our prep for this, I started off with noting that, like, less than 100 companies worldwide are responsible for the majority of all emissions, and I think that’s a really important, you know, important thing to remember that, like, you know what sustainable web design on its own is not going to save The planet, you know, or, or the people on it for however, it might help a lot of people use the internet better, and it might, you might be able to reduce the energy use of the Internet significantly. There’s, there’s, there’s a lot of things that is really, really good for. But I do want to be really clear about the fact that it’s not a solution for climate change in and of itself. You know that being said, you know, I think every, every industry is going to have a reckoning. You know, we’re in this time where we’re, you know, climate change is existential crisis of our time, and we know that the you know, what’s coming down the pipe is not great. And every industry is going to have a reckoning. They’re going to go through and be like, what is it that my industry can do, whether I work in steel manufacturing or whether I work in web design, there’s still going to be that like industry, you know, kind of discussion about like, All right, well, how do we make our own discipline more sustainable? And I think the web sustainability guidelines are a really good start at understanding what you know, the web industry as a whole can do to meaningfully, you know, change some of the things that we do that aren’t so great. You know,

Bo Peter 18:10
absolutely I mean to step in to outside of the world of marketing and sustainability and web guidelines. When you look at a fact like that, less than 100 companies are responsible for the greater majority of all emissions. Do you think that, you know, like you said, industries are going to have to go through their own reckoning? Are these types of companies going to have that level of self awareness, from your personal opinion, to actually do something about this? Or is it, is it going to take that consumer change in behavior to actually pushed them over the edge. I

Tim Frick 18:41
don’t even think it’s going to, I mean, I don’t think it’s going to take either of those. Honestly. I think it’s going to take regulatory guidance and framework. So I think that that, you know, consumer behavior, yes, will certainly drive some of it. And yes, there will be companies, like many of the B Corp community, that will be cognizant enough to be like, Hey, this is a problem in our industry, and we should really focus on the solution. However, I think until we get, you know, you know, actual legislation around some of these things to say, hey, you know, and that’s moving in that direction. And you know, there’s CSRD in Europe, and you know, a few other legislative things are definitely moving in that direction. And so the W 3c, has historically been really great at using its standards to provide regulatory guidance and W 3c in and of itself, is not a regulatory body at all, however many, many countries use their standards and their guidelines and such as as kind of information to to inform legislative guidance and regulatory frameworks and stuff. And so I think that’s really where the, think main part of this has to lie. And so, you know, I also think as a company, as a small business, having, you know, kind of advocacy efforts within the company to say, All right, well, how do we, as. Business owners as people who hire people and who are employers in regions. How do we talk to our politicians about, you know, making sure this is meaningful to them and they they understand it. Because, you know, politicians probably don’t know squat about web design or even why it’s important, you know, and so like figuring out how to tell those stories in ways that are meaningful, so that regulators can actually, you know, start crafting realistic, meaningful legislation around this stuff. Is, to me, what’s really important, which is why open up a story like this with a stat like, oh, 100 companies are responsible for climate change, you know, and there’s a huge amount of missions associated with that, but here are some things that we can actually do that. Maybe we’re not part of those 100 companies, or maybe we are, and we work on the inside, and can actually, you know, start creating change from within the large organization then, and

Bo Peter 20:52
so is that the story that you would tell from an advocacy side to a politician, that, Hey, there’s this large amount of companies responsible. How can we as a company make sure that we are as a country, or great, you know, take your locale as you like. Is that the story that you need to tell, or is there something else? No, I

Tim Frick 21:13
think that is the story that ultimately you need to tell that. But part of that story is that there are already large amounts of people working on this and tools and resources and frameworks and stuff like that. And so the politicians don’t need to become web design experts. They need to just understand that there is an impact in this industry, and, you know, and it requires some meaningful, you know, meaningful legislation in order to move this forward, in order to meaningfully address climate change and meaningfully address some of the big problems in the industry, like E waste and, you know, kind of a number of things, you know, like that. And so, you know, figuring out what from a communications perspective. I know you said you want to move outside of marketing and communications, but at the end of the day, it’s about telling a compelling story that is easy to understand and can be told in a meaningful way, in a few talking points, so that people get it, and then they can endure return, you know, say those talking points on their own and understand what they’re actually talking about. Because I, you know, the average person doesn’t understand data centers or any of this kind of stuff, and so just kind of help helping them understand that the rapid growth of the industry also means a rapid expansion of its environmental impact.

Bo Peter 22:25
Absolutely, it’s something that we, internally here at peaceful media, are always discussing is, how do we tell a narrative in a story, in a way that inspires people to want to take action, versus sort of the loom like, yeah, yeah. So I like this, this way of what you’re talking about, or how you’re talking about it, and a key aspect, aspect of that is collaboration. You know for sure, the story that you’ve told so far, it’s very clear that collaboration has played a very important effort into not just creating these guidelines, but promoting them, and thus even telling, telling this story. And that can then extend to that providing support, for sure. Yeah,

Tim Frick 23:05
it also helps to broaden the scope too, because, you know, no one person, one company, or even a couple companies are going to know it all. And so like, you know, we actively recruit, for instance, people within the hosting industry to help us with the hosting and infrastructure guidelines, and we actively recruit UX designers to help us with the UX design guidelines. Even though it’s all kind of under the umbrella of one industry, there’s a lot of moving parts to that industry, and so having a very large collaborative partnership group to work from really helps us, you know, source out the best of our knowledge, our collective knowledge, and put those into, you know, one unifying piece of work.

Bo Peter 23:46
Yeah, excellent. I mean, it takes an incredible amount of self awareness to not just assume that you can write it all yourself, right?

Tim Frick 23:53
These are my guidelines. Well, that’s, you know, and that’s what we’ve been told as business leaders, especially if you’re an entrepreneur, you’ve been told that you should have the hero’s journey and go out on your own and and do all the things and solve all the problems and all that kind of stuff. And the reality is that a better future lies in collaboration. And so, you know, figuring out how to do that successfully is probably one of the most important business skills you can have from the get go. I would venture to say web design or no web design.

Bo Peter 24:23
So we kind of have the assumption here that entrepreneurs and marketing who are interested in sustainability space are already working in it, are listening to this. So with that, what you just said in mind about collaboration. What else would you share with them? Or how? What would you emphasize about collaboration, to inspire them to take that take that stance and that perspective.

Tim Frick 24:45
Yeah, I think you know, if you’re, if you are in, you know, digital marketing and digital sustainability, there’s, there are so many resources and groups out there that are already doing a lot of really great work. And. And we don’t, you know, 90% of the time, we don’t need another one. We need this one and that one to collaborate. You know, we need, you know, this this group has this amount of knowledge and resources, and this group has this one, and, you know, the two of them call it, can collaborate in a meaningful way. So if you’re looking for where to get started, you know, in terms of creating your own change, whether it’s within your company or if you’re a freelancer, or whatever. Those groups things like climate action dot tech in our W 3c group. And there’s a ton of networks within the B Corp community. There’s There’s hundreds of them that are focused on all elements of running a more responsible business and stuff like that. And so those groups are a great place to start to network, to learn, to and to start fostering collaboration. And that’s a that’s a big part of what I spend my week doing, honestly. You know, my work week is making sure that I’ve earmarked enough time where I can meaningfully collaborate within those groups and provide value that I that I can offer, but then also learn from everybody within the group that is there. And, you know, we’re all there to create some kind of collective impact and solve some big, wicked problems. So that’s usually a very inspiring experience.

Bo Peter 26:10
And does that collaboration now, just from a business perspective, then help fuel back into sustaining Mightybytes

Tim Frick 26:17
indeed. Yeah, yeah. I think, um, and that is that is that kind of goes up and down, you know, I think that not everything that we do in the kind of impact realm directly leads to, like, business development or leads to business but overall, you know, we’re so impact forward in our messaging and and and in the kind of mission forward content that we Create and the resources that we provide and share that you can’t help but attract like minded organizations who are like, Oh, I I would like to learn more about that, or I would like to work with an organization that prioritizes that kind of stuff. And so ultimately, it does definitely lead to, you know, business collaborations of all sorts, whether that’s client, you know, client, vendor, or whether that’s business strategic partnerships, or whatever it definitely provides, you know, kind of a shared business value. And I think that’s another important point. Like that idea of shared value, it’s, you know, we say business, and we immediately have to go, go towards the financial bottom line. And that is incredibly important. Absolutely, I don’t want to discount that at all, but it’s not the only form form of capital out there. You know, financial capital is just one of what eight forms of capital, you know, human capital, intellectual capital, all these different kinds of, you know, ways that a company creates value beyond just bringing money. And it’s important to acknowledge that and then also understand how to use that in everybody’s best interest.

Bo Peter 27:48
Well, I certainly found you through the great content that Mightybytes has put out as well. So that very much goes to say about about the great work you’re doing on that front. And you know, the more I got to learn about you, Tim, the more impressed I was to find out about all these different facets that you’ve done in terms of providing information, creating these guidelines, putting tool sets out there, tool kits out there, to help people adopt not just sustainable web design practices, but responsible tech usage, responsible vendors, a whole host of things. So of course, hey, if you’re listening, check out the Mightybytes website, and you’ll you’ll find all sorts of great content there. I think that pivots nicely into, how can we adopt sustainable web design practices more broadly? Because, you know, you’re doing so much work in the awareness and education space, and I know that’s obviously a big hurdle, because people need to know about this to be able to implement it. But what else stands in the way of being able to move the needle in the right direction when it comes to a sustainable web design and a more sustainable internet?

Tim Frick 28:54
Yeah, that’s a great question, and I think there is no one specific answer to that. I think what I refer to, or reference most often, is accessibility. You know, that has web accessibility has been around for over 20 years now, and the W, 3c, is championed that cause, and it’s been the main organization, you know, kind of pushing, pushing for, for accessibility on the web. And, you know, there have been a lot of lessons learned from that group. We’ve been working with the web accessibility initiative within the W 3c because they’re like, You should do this, and you should definitely not do that, you know? And they’ve, it’s been really great to have that mentorship from from them to just kind of learn from a similar kind of discipline, to say, you know, this is, this is what we learned in this process. This is where we’re at. Um, you know, I would say it’s been 20 plus years for accessibility, and there’s still some major hurdles that accessibility faces. Um, you know, there’s the web aim does their web million report. I’m not sure that that’s exactly the name of it, but they do it every year where they they check a million home. Of some of the most popular and well, traffic websites are across the internet. And, you know, each year the stats are more sobering. And so there are definitely major hurdles. You know, in the web. A million report this year it was that, like 96% of home pages had some basic accessibility, you know, hurdle or problem. And that’s, you know, that’s 2024 after accessibility has been around as a known thing and a standard for many years, and in many countries, it’s the law. And so, you know, that shows that there’s, you know, major challenges on the web in terms of, just, you know, making the education and awareness available to the broadest and widest number of people, and then actually having that, you know, become, become the default way things are done. And we’re trying to do the same thing with sustainability. The practices are different, but the the end goal is the same. Is to have, you know, sustainability be the default way that people, you know, design and build digital products and services. And, you know, I think there’s a good case in both, both of those for for, you know, embracing them. I think that for organizations, for whatever reason, they’re really, really big on cutting corners. And when that happens, oftentimes education and that kind of stuff gets, gets axed in the budget. And, you know, there’s really good case for, you know, accessible websites tend to be more search engine friendly. They tend to be faster. They tend to be work across wider number of browsers and devices and stuff like that. Similarly accessible web, Webster, I mean, sustainable websites are more performant. They’re, you know, higher performance, lower impact. They provide the information that users need quickly and efficiently. They’re powered by renewable energy, and oftentimes, because they transmit less data, they can also reduce costs. And so there’s, you know, really compelling case, cases across the board to say, you know, if you do this in this way, there’s, it’s, you know, that’s a really good, good you know thing for your organization or business to do by default. You know,

Bo Peter 32:14
absolutely and building a an ROI is a case for for anything is always going to help push the needle a little bit when making that decision. I know, from an SEO perspective, that’s my main bread and butter, that the site speed, the usability. That’s all going playing a much bigger factor, especially in 2024 and so then, you know, that’s yet another case study point that you can make. Hey, a faster website, if you’re focused on SEO, it’s gonna make a big difference there. So, yeah, I love that. Something that you had brought up earlier was carbon tunnel vision, that there’s, you know, the propensity to just focus on, like, what are carbon emissions, and how do we solve for that? And you also had mentioned to me that there are other problems that the web creates, including water usage as well as social and economic problems. Could you talk about just briefly for what are some of these other issues that the web is creating in this way and that we should be aware of?

Tim Frick 33:15
Yeah, I think you know, we just touched on one of them, with accessibility. If 96% of the home pages of major websites are have some functional accessibility issue. That’s a, that’s a major social issue, because you’re excluding people with disabilities, which is, you know, up to 1 billion people around the world. I mean, that’s, you know, a major social, social kind of issue related to that. But I think, you know, you think of AI in the massive amounts of energy and water that it used. I just read earlier this week that Google no longer calls itself a carbon neutral country because of its resource use has exploded since they’ve been putting so many, so many resources, or time and energy and money into building out their AI products and stuff. And so there’s some, you know, major challenges there from the environmental perspective, and AI feeds into so many of them, like E waste, which is, you know, millions of tons of electronic waste, which, you know, starts in the Global North and usually ends up in the global south and causing health problems and all of this kind of stuff. And you know, a lot of times big data centers will exhaust their hardware very quickly because of the needs of AI and stuff like that, and or they’ll replace it because it’s a year or two old. Whether or not it’s, you know, it’s considered obsolete, even though it might not be, there’s probably still some life to it and stuff. And yet, that stuff ends up in landfills in the global south and causing, you know, huge amounts of problems. So I think that’s another one. I think the from an economic perspective, the gig economy is a disaster, you know. I mean, it’s really like, there’s, there’s really, really, just ask any Uber driver, for instance, like, if they’re making. A really good wage, and if they’re really enjoying their gig economy, gig and so I think there’s some big challenges there regarding, like, you know, just living wages and sharing economic benefits, and, you know, right for collective bargaining, you know, all of that kind of stuff. I think there’s, a lot of challenges that are going on there, and big tech especially, it’s like kind of feeding right into a lot of those things. Those are just a few off the top of my head, but I’m sure I could come up with a dozen more if we had another hour. But you don’t want to hear that.

Bo Peter 35:38
Well, it is, again, good to know all of the different impacts that this is are are having. And, yeah, it’s not something I had considered previously that the, you know, we often hear about the phenomenal growth of Nvidia and all of the chips that they’re putting out there, but you know, that does require these companies to consistently just be to be buying and replacing and constantly, I would imagine, or I would hope rather, that they would put those chips to some some sort of reuse. But I suppose that’s just sometimes not my cards. It just takes more time. And there

Tim Frick 36:14
are some companies that are doing that and doing a really good job at that, and then there are a lot of companies that are not, you know, and that kind of feeds into that, like, whole right to repair thing as well. I mean, that happens on the user side too, Planned Obsolescence for, you know, the device that sits in your pocket. And soon as it’s a year old, you know, immediately software updates are telling you, well, this, no device is no longer supported. And, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of, a lot of issues related to that as well that are kind of tying to all of this too, not only at the big chip manufacturers, but actually all the way down to the individual users choices and stuff.

Bo Peter 36:51
Yeah, absolutely, and that’s yeah right to repair is going to help us keep some of these pocket devices in our pockets a little bit longer. I certainly don’t want to replace my iPhone or whatever phone, right, right? So, yeah, cool. And I had to look it up because I was just like, water usage. How is the internet having? What does it have to do? Right? Water usage and shock to and had, yeah, it makes sense. Now, of course, all these data centers are out there. They need cooling as well. And that AI is about, it’s using about 1000 times more water per parameter per search, which is, yeah, astounding, and we already have so many water issues around the world, as I knew that in terms of right usage and other ways. And this just creates another portal of conflict. What are sure to how do we use this?

Tim Frick 37:44
I live in the American Midwest, and I’m on the board of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, which is, you know, covers water issues in our area, in our region and and well, you know, data centers are not on their radar in terms of action items and stuff like that. At this point, I have to imagine that it’s only a matter of time because of the amount of water that the Great Lakes contain, that that, you know, these two issues are going to come, come to butt heads at some point there’s like, I was just looking looking it up with a journalist friend of mine, who’s also in the Midwest, and there’s already 500 data centers around the Great Lakes. And, you know, data set, the number of data centers is looking to double by 2030 I think it’s double. It’s definitely exploding, in terms of an industry that is just getting massive. And so, you know, if they use as much water as everybody’s claiming, they do, and we are in a place where there’s a lot of fresh water, it’s only a matter of time for someone’s coming for that, or trying to at least, yeah,

Bo Peter 38:45
well, I hope this doesn’t, well, you already know it’s gonna butt heads. I can’t just say I hope for the best speakers. It’s not, it’s not a sustainable strategy.

Tim Frick 38:53
No, we can’t, I’d say we can’t do that anymore, unfortunately.

Bo Peter 39:01
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I want to ask you, well, what can we do? But I think it’s, it’s doing the involvement that you’re the right to the level that you have, especially it’s just becoming aware and trying to put into put into practice some of the these guidelines, as well as just figure out ways to mitigate some of the issues that are being created from these increased energy and water demands. For sure,

Tim Frick 39:23
I think as a business, it is a business leader. If you are a business leader, even if you’re not, we owe it to our sector to figure out how we blend, you know, purpose and profit. In the B Corp community, there’s this thing called an impact business model, which essentially allows you to kind of fold or roll impact creation into the way that you make money. So for my Mightybytes, has three. We have one for sustainability. So we basically build everything by default as as using sustainable web design practices. We have one for accessibility. So by default, we target a web content accessible. Ability, guidelines, level, aa, for all the products that we build. And so there’s these, these ways to kind of roll it into your business, to say, alright, this is how my business makes money, and this is how I create impact while I’m making money. And so, you know, we have several but there’s a lot of B Corps that really push the envelope on that, and say, Okay, well, given everything that my business does. How can I create these impact business models so that that’s all kind of rolled or folded into the DNA of the business and not like, oh, we write a check at the end of the year to some philanthropy organization as a philanthropy organization, or, you know, we do pro bono projects over here. And it’s not really, you’re not changing your business practices. You’re just kind of doing this feel good thing, like I said, at the end of the year or whenever, that has those have value and those definitely have benefit. But they’re not the only way to go about making impact as a company, and I think that that’s behooves business leaders to think a little bit harder about that stuff.

Bo Peter 41:02
How I mean, I’m just curious. Like, how have you become motivated? I know we talked a little bit up beginning to care so much about this and to actually want to put in that extra effort. And maybe more importantly, what can what do you feel like others can learn from this to integrate the this into their businesses? Is it easier than, than than one might think, or is it, yeah, there’s,

Tim Frick 41:24
there’s a lot of great, I mean, it’s, it’s the one wonderful, amazing thing about the web, which is why I think, you know, 30 plus, 35 years into my career, I’m still, still in it, and involved in it, is that there are so many wonderful resources on the web. And, like, there’s an impact business model, Canvas, for instance, like, that’s, you know, kind of sprung from the Lean Canvas. So it’s an easy way to just say, I want to create an impact business model. This is what I do as a business how can I go through the process of figuring out what an impact business model looks like? It’s free, it’s available, it’s downloadable. Um, you can just Google impact business model and find it. Um, it, it’s, you know, it’s like that those kinds of resources are widely available on the web. And I think that’s like I said, one of the reasons I still enjoy, you know, being part of the web world is that there are just so many people have put out so much great stuff. That is that can really help. Regardless of who you are, where you’re at. You know, you can usually find answers to your questions pretty quickly. Sadly, in the age of AI, you know, you have to run them through the extra filter of misinformation and disinformation just to make sure they’re, you know, the the solutions being suggested to you are actually viable settings. That’s another that’s a whole other podcast,

Bo Peter 42:38
right, right? And I think we already listed out some whole other podcast episodes around becoming a B Corp, for example. But to that last question, and you had already given me a list of companies and campaigns that you admire for their ability to implement this effectively, and I really would like us to just cover some of that and to share it. You know, do you want to just tell me again, what are some of these companies and why do you admire their ability to implement this effectively?

Tim Frick 43:10
Yeah, I think there’s, you know, probably first and foremost. I have to put whole grain digital at the top of the list. There, there. If there ever was a company similar to Mightybytes. I’d say they, they are they are it. We have known about each other and have collaborated. I would help, collaborated on the sustainable Web Design site with them. They’re a B Corp. They’re a digital agency. They’re very similar to our company. And, you know, they created website carbon, it’s similar to the way we created eco grader. They’ve really dove headlong into, you know, figuring out how to incorporate web sustainability or digital sustainability into their business model. And again, like I said, there are B Corp as well, so they’re doing a lot of a lot of like employee engagement and equity work and all kinds of really great stuff that I think ours, they would probably go at the top of the list. I also think the green Web Foundation is up there as well. You know, small organization based out of the Netherlands and Berlin, that is, you know, working towards a fossil free Internet by 2030 they’ve been around for a really long time, and they have, like, the only known, at least to my knowledge, known host database to green web hosts. And so there’s, there’s a lot of organizations that have been kind of just like, like mighty vice just chipping away at this in small doses for many, many, many years. And those are the ones that are really, really inspiring to me. Like, those are two examples of companies or organizations that have been really focused on this for a very long time are deep into it. They’ve they’ve figured out solutions to problems, and they’re, you know, rolling up their sleeves and doing the work. And that’s that’s meaningful and impressive to me,

Bo Peter 44:57
amazing. So I’ll make sure to put the links to. These organizations in the show notes so that people can check it out. I certainly need to spend more time with it. And you know, throughout this conversation, I’m really thinking in the back of my head, huh, how can we do more of this work better as well? And for us, that’s exactly why we’re on this journey, and why we wanted to start this podcast to find these resources and nuggets of wisdom that we might not have otherwise been able to find. So I hope as well that this conversation inspires other people to do that research learn how to roll impact into their businesses and that, I mean, I know that I’m going to certainly be spending more time reading through this literature to figure out how we can do that ourselves. So thank you for that inspiration. Yeah,

Tim Frick 45:41
sure. I mean, I’m on my own learning journey. It’s, you know, well, we’ve been shipping it away, away at it for a really long time. I learn new stuff every day, and our goal is always just to share it as broadly and as widely as possible. Because there’s probably some if we had that question, there’s probably someone else out there who had that question as well. And if we can help them find answers to that question, then I think we’re doing at least part of our job as a company.

Bo Peter 46:06
Absolutely. And I had asked you in our preparation for this, you know, what can agencies such as peaceful media and the tech industry do in driving positive change? You’ve made a very clear case about how the tech industry has a awful track record. You also then provided the responsible tech advocacy advocacy toolkit to just kind of show where we could do this. Does this better? Tell me a little bit more about the responsible tech advocacy How did it get started now you did some research, and where can people learn more about this? Sure, and how to use it. Yeah. So

Tim Frick 46:41
I one of the things that I do as what is called an in the B Corp community is called a network leader. And so the network that I’m currently working in is the B Corp marketers network, and it’s a collection of marketers within companies as well as at agencies that are in the B Corp community. The purpose and mission of the of the network is to help B Corp marketers do their jobs better, get resources so that they can learn about responsible marketing, ethical marketing, sustainable marketing, etc, and have resources available to them. And what I found is talking even, even in the B Corp community, talking to a lot of marketers and people who are decision makers within B Corps that this idea of responsible Tech was a thing that they’d heard of, but it wasn’t necessarily a thing that they were actively doing anything about. And so we’ve done a number of webinars through the B Corp marketers network to talk about data colonialism and to talk about digital sustainability and accessibility and some of these things. And, you know, there’s been a push as things as there’s been a lot of pushback on like sustainability efforts and DEI efforts and stuff like that, from, you know, usually conservative politicians and stuff. There has been a push within the B Corp community to be like, Nope, this is the right way to do business, and here’s why. And so there’s been a lot more advocacy work done within the B Corp community. I wouldn’t say, like, we’ve been a member of that community for 13 years now. And I wouldn’t say, you know, political advocacy was top of mind in 2013 2014 whereas there’s a, you know, team now at B Lab that focuses on political advocacy and focuses on, you know, specifically around political advocacy for responsible business. So our marketers network takes that same approach for marketers. And so the responsible tech advocacy toolkit was to help collect a number of resources in one place. And and, you know, essentially find the organizations, the toolkits, the legislation that is being passed or isn’t being passed or needs to be passed, everything from data privacy to accessibility legislation and stuff. And so it’s really to collect everything in one, one place. And so we, we, two, three weeks ago, we did a webinar on data colonialism and talked about kind of big tech and surveillance capitalism and stuff like that. And as part of that, we released this, this advocacy toolkit. It is an open Google Doc, and I can give you the link to it. There’s also a link to it on my device website, um, anybody, even though it’s specifically for B Corps, anybody within any company, will probably find it useful if you’re looking to incorporate some sort of advocacy efforts into the marketing work that you

Bo Peter 49:35
do amazing. Well, again, we’re going to make sure to put that into the show notes. Uh, yeah. I mean, I’ll have to learn more about this myself. But was, as someone with a political science academic back was interested in in this type of thing for sure. So it’ll, it’ll be another thing for me to to learn about, of which there are so many things that I’m. Getting out of this conversation, Tim, which truly is fantastic. So thank you for that. I have a feeling that you and I could talk about all sorts of things for a long time, and I know that we already have several podcast episodes ideas at the back of the head. So with that in mind, I want to take the opportunity to do a small thank you on behalf of peaceful media by planting some trees on your behalf and alMightybytes bath, you had mentioned that you had taken a look here and were interested in the Urban Forestry Initiative presented by one tree planted. Could you tell us briefly about why urban forestry is important to you? Sure? Yeah,

Tim Frick 50:44
I think I spent 30 plus years living in Chicago, and, you know, Chicago has an amazing lakefront and so, and I’m a cyclist, so biking down the lakefront path is really important to me, but so is access to nature, and this access to wooded spaces, spaces and you know, Chicago has a lot of really great forest preserves and such like that. But I do feel like, you know, urban forestry, like just having access to trees and nature and stuff within urban settings is a really important way to address so many issues. And so I just, I decided that was a really good, a good, you know, good, good choice for for present as an organization to support

Bo Peter 51:31
awesome Maya, thank you for choosing urban forestry. I like the dedicated, the why it’s relevant for you. And I can certainly relate having, again, be a Dutch person. We cycle all the time, having some some tree coverage, and that access to nature really makes a big difference. Tim, thank you again for spending close to an hour with me to discuss the sustainability, sustainability web guidelines and all the other work that you’ve put together, I’m really inspired to figure out what we can do better as an organization and how we can integrate some of this work, as well as think more deeply about how to take, yeah, these impact frameworks and to integrate them into our business with what we’re already doing beyond working with organizations in the sustainability space. So for that, thanks very much. I will be putting the Mightybytes website link on the show notes, and I know that people can also connect with you on LinkedIn. That’s Tim Frick, T, I m, F R, I C, K, any other places where you’d like people to connect with you, if anywhere else? I think those two are really,

Tim Frick 52:46
I think those are the best, best places to connect with us. We, we have, have left many of our social media profiles, which, as a marketing agency, was a little bit kind of like, Hey, should we do that? But that’s again, another whole podcast on on the rationale behind that. But yeah, I think LinkedIn and then the Mightybytes website are probably the best places to reach out.

Bo Peter 53:11
Awesome. Well, Tim, thank you again. I really appreciate your time today and for having me. Appreciate it very much. All right. Bye, bye,

53:21
thank you for tuning in to our podcast. Marketing for What Matters. You can find us on Apple, Spotify, Google or Pandora. Love the show, leave us a review and follow us on social media, at peaceful media, to stay up to date about new episodes. And as always, thank you to this earth for giving us all we’ve ever needed. See you next time. Bye,