Parisladefense.com Ecodesign Declaration

Publication date - June 2025

Introduction

Paris La Défense has set itself the ambitious goal of becoming the world's leading post-carbon business district.

The context has changed profoundly since the creation of La Défense. On the one hand, new ways of working and living in the office, combined with environmental emergencies, call for a profound rethinking of the way we design and live in the city. On the other hand, the region's carbon footprint is still too high - comparable to that of a major regional city.

Faced with these facts, Paris La Défense is undertaking a fundamental transformation, in line with current social, societal and ecological expectations.

The Paris La Défense website has therefore been designed and developed with ecodesign in mind.

What is eco-design?

Ecodesign involves taking environmental issues into account right from the design stage of a service, and throughout all stages of its lifecycle (IEC 62430 standard). It's a continuous improvement approach implemented thanks to the RGESN ( RGESN: référentiel général de l'écoconception des services numériques version 2024) (see the RGESN on the ARCEP website).

Objective

The parisladefense.com website is part of an eco-design approach aimed at reducing environmental impacts. To this end, this declaration was drawn up on June 16, 2025, as part of the implementation of the general reference framework for the eco-design of digital services (version 2024).

The general reference framework for the eco-design of digital services, a document produced by Arcep and Arcom in collaboration with ADEME, DINUM, CNIL and Inria, is available on the Arcep website.

Its implementation has four main objectives:

1. Designing more sustainable digital services to extend the lifespan of terminals;
2. Promote environmental sobriety in the face of strategies to capture user attention for uses in line with international environmental objectives;
3. Reduce IT resources, optimize data traffic and the use of digital infrastructures;
4. Increase transparency on the environmental footprint of digital services.

This audit was carried out by the parisladefense.com design team, and was not subject to external review.

Progress map for the digital service eco-design approach

In addition, the following courses of action have been or will be implemented:

• Eliminate site appearance animations (particularly on the homepage) (4.1 and 4.6)
• Implement an automated content archiving policy (7.2)
• Continue to improve CEGEDIM's DPU (8.3)

To achieve this, annual reviews and audits are carried out.

Details of the diagnosis with the general reference framework for the eco-design of digital services

1 Strategy

Assessment of the utility of the service, taking into account its environmental impact

Criterion 1.1: Validated ✅

• The parisladefense.com site has been favorably evaluated in terms of public utility. Paris La Défense is a public establishment whose site aims to inform users of the business district about local life and the services available (transport, works, places to eat, events...).

Target users of parisladefense.com

Criterion 1.2: Validated ✅

• The service has carefully defined its user targets: a UX study has identified 3 personas with specific needs (employees, regular visitors and local residents). As a result, the digital service meets their needs, offering the following functionalities in particular: find practical information on getting around, the restaurant offer, available outings and events, find out about construction work, a dedicated space for professionals.

Digital eco-design referent

Criterion 1.3: Validated ✅

• Digital eco-design contact for the department: Maud Husset - Paris La Défense Digital Marketing Manager

Criterion 1.4: Validated ✅

• Regular audits are carried out every year to continuously improve the service's environmental performance (first carried out in September 2023, July 2024 and June 2025).

Criterion 1.5: Not validated ☑️

Data and license

Criterion 1.6: Validated ✅

• The digital service only collects contact data to respond to requests made via the contact form or for newsletter subscriptions for communication purposes.
• There is no user account system with registration or storage of personal data on the site.
• There is no collection of metadata for advertising purposes (use of Matomo).
• The processing of personal data can be consulted via the link in the legal notice.

Criteria 1.7: Not validated ☑️

• No cryptographic mechanism has been implemented.

Criterion 1.8: Not validated ☑️

Criteria 1.9: Validated ✅

• The service has been designed using standard interoperable web technology.

Criterion 1.10: Not Validated ☑️

2 Specifications

Minimum hardware configuration to access the service

Criterion 2.1: Validated ✅

Based on tests carried out on Browserstack :

• Site functional on minimum desktop OS: Windows 8 - IOS Catalina
• Site functional on minimum browser versions: Edge 85 - Opera V90 - Firefox V80 - Safari V15.6 - Chrome V90
• Site functional on minimum mobile: Mobile iphone 11 on Safari V15.3 and Chrome V14.0

Criteria 2.2: Validated ✅

The service is usable on older devices, harmonize mobile resolution and put 320 px. Web technology is interoperable, enabling older terminals to access the service.

Criteria 2.3: Validated ✅

Minimum Internet connection: DSL and 3G No loading problems for the majority of the site's pages, which are less than 800kb in size.

Criteria 2.4: Validated ✅

• Desktop : Minimum browser version: Edge 85 - Opera V90 - Firefox V80 - Safari V15.6 - Chrome V90
• Mobile : minimum browser version: safari V15.3 - chrome V14.0

Criteria 2.5: Validated ✅

Mobile-first design and adoption of responsive design: display compatible on desktop and mobile screens

• Display sizes supported by the service: harmonize mobile resolution and put 320 px.
• Detailed tests carried out: navigation on typical user paths with the Google Chrome code inspector.

Design, maintenance and decommissioning strategy

Criteria 2.6 and 2.7: Not validated ☑️

Suppliers

Criteria 2.8: Validated ✅

The specifications for the site redesign imposed environmental requirements on its suppliers, in particular the design agency, development agency and hosting provider. The CCTP of the tender for the site redesign stipulates that the contractor must ensure :

• Carry out actions in favor of re-use, re-conditioning, integration of recycled materials and recycling;
• Energy savings and the development of renewable energies;
• Preventing waste production and directing it towards recovery channels;
• Environmental practices applied to the way services are provided, and in particular policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality;
• Reducing the impact on biodiversity;
• Raising stakeholder awareness of the environmental issues involved in carrying out the contract.

It should be noted that an effort was made to use an open source solution for mapping. In fact, unlike the pre-relief site, the current site uses Open Street Map for mapping.

Ready-to-use interface components used

Criteria 2.9 : Not validated ☑️

List of third-party services used by the service

Criterion 2.10: Not validated ☑️

3 Architecture

Choice of architecture and components

Checkpoint 3.1: Not validated ☑️

Criterion 3.2: Not validated ☑️

Exchange protocols used

Criterion 3.3: Validated ✅

To prevent the risk of obsolescence and limit the need for updates or upgrades, the digital service relies on protocols that are perennial and adapted to its functionalities. In particular

• The digital service is accessible in IPV6 (does not use IPV4).
• The digital service is based on the HTTPS protocol.

Updating

Criteria 3.4: Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/site.

Criteria 3.5: Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/on the site.

Criteria 3.6: Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/site.

Development, pre-production or test environments

Criterion 3.7: Validated ✅

Pre-production environments by functionality (branch environments) are destroyed as soon as they are no longer in use (PR merged into the main branch). A perennial staging environment exists, it is mutualized in the sense that it is unique.

4 User experience and interface

Components

Criteria 4.1: Not validated ☑️

Criterion 4.2: Validated ✅

The digital service does not display any content with infinite scrolling.

Criterion 4.3: Validated ✅

Pathways were optimized for each main functionality: finding out about your neighborhood, finding out about bike traffic, finding out where to eat and organizing an event. The design agency was accompanied by the expert who had carried out the pre-refonte eco-design audit to ensure that the paths were indeed optimized.

Criterion 4.4: Validated ✅

Criterion 4.5: Not validated ☑️

Audiovisual and animated content

Criterion 4.6: Not validated ☑️

Criterion 4.7: Validated ✅

The most sober choices between text, image and video have been made on each page. For example, numerous videos and photo carousels previously present on major events have been replaced by a simple photo.

Criteria 4.8: Validated ✅ The site uses no custom fonts, only system fonts such as Helvetica.

Criteria 4.9: Validated ✅ No autocompletion on the site.

Criteria 4.10: Validated ✅ The number of queries is limited during user input. For example, no suggestions or autocompletions have been implemented on the search engines (General, Dining out, Entertainment, etc.).

Criterion 4.11: Validated ✅ The digital service informs the user, prior to transfer, of the expected file weights and formats.

User empowerment

Criterion 4.12: Validated ✅

The service does not contain any functionality with a significant environmental impact, compared to others: no video or other consumer media, nor downloads with a high weight.

Criterion 4.13: Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/on the site.

Criterion 4.14: Validated ✅

The interface does not include any manipulative "dark pattern". For example, refusing cookies is as simple as accepting them.

Criteria 4.15: Not Validated ☑️

This service is not compliant with the RGESN, insofar as it does not offer any means of concretely measuring the environmental footprint of its use, apart from the eco-design declaration page and the routes analyzed via GreenIT Analysis.

In this case, adding functionalities designed to estimate environmental impact would not add value, and would even risk adding unnecessary complexity, especially as this impact would remain very limited.

Furthermore, there is no relevant use case for an energy-saving mode, as the interface was designed from the outset to be energy-saving by default.

5 Content

The digital service implements eco-design principles to reduce the weight of the audiovisual content it integrates as much as possible. The following elements outline the main perimeters defined to minimize the environmental footprint of the images, videos and audio on which the service is based.

Images

Criteria 5.1 and 5.2: Validated ✅

• Image media are in webP format (quality images with file sizes smaller than traditional formats such as PNG and JPEG), and with dimensions adapted to the viewing context.
• Some images are removed in mobile view as they would lose visibility.
• Multiple resolutions for optimized display on mobile and desktop devices
• Media compression and quality settings prior to upload (using tools such as TinyPNG), or when the image is saved on the server, to achieve weights of less than 100kb.

Video content

Criteria 5.3 and 5.4: Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/site.

• No video hosted on the site

Criterion 5.5: Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/on the site.

• No audio track on the site

Audio

Criterion 5.6: Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/on the site.

• No audio on the site

Documents

Criteria 5.7: Validated ✅

• PDF files available on the site, which the user can export, are compressed as much as possible using specific online tools designed for this purpose (such as iLovePDF).
• Video use is kept to a minimum, and is hosted outside the site (Youtube player).
• The number of images per page is limited (no carousels or image galleries).
• media are compressed (via TinyPNG).
• Animated GIFs and PNG formatsarelimited in favor of svg (vector format) or webP.

Criteria 5.8: Validated ✅

• Manual deletion of old content (older than one year) and redirection of the user to a general url for all "hot" content (articles and calendar events).

6 Frontend - 7 Backend

Weight and query limits

Criterion 6.1 : Not applicable ****- The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/on the site.

Caching strategy

Criteria 6.2 and 7.1: Validated ✅

A server caching system has been effectively implemented on the user side for the most frequently used data. These include javascript files and images.

Checkpoint 6.3: Not validated ☑️

Criterion 6.4: Validated ✅ Several image variants exist with different definitions (mobile / desktop), and the best one is proposed to the screen, depending on the display context.

Criteria 6.5: Validated ✅

No resources loaded unnecessarily.

Criterion 6.6: Validated ✅ User terminal sensors are not used unnecessarily. For example, geolocation is never requested on geographic search interfaces.

Criterion 6.7: Validated ✅ All static resources transferred from Paris La Défense are hosted on the same domain.

Checkpoint 7.2: In progress

Checkpoint 7.3: Validated ✅

The user is informed if processing is in progress in the background. It is not possible to click on the submit button until the data has been sent, for example.

Blockchain

Criterion 7.4: Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/site.

8 Hosting

Name of supplier or provider of physical hosting of servers (storage or computing in particular) to enable monitoring of the environmental impact of hosting: CEGEDIM

Ecological commitments of the hosting provider

Criterion 8.1: Validated ✅

CEGEDIM is a certified signatory of the European Code of Conduct on Datacenters (Labelled in September 2023). It has implemented a detailed footprint reduction program on their site.

Criterion 8.2: Not validated ☑️

Environmental efficiency of service hosting

Criteria 8.3: Not validated ☑️

CEGEDIM's PUE varies between 1.55 and 1.78 for the year 2024 (average higher than the 1.5 actually expected).

Criterion 8.4: Validated ✅

WUE (Water Usage Efficiency) is thus 0 per kWh and remains a constant scope target.

Documentation on the origin of electricity consumed

Criterion 8.5: Validated ✅

All datacenters are supplied by a 100% renewable electricity contract.

Hosting location

Criterion 8.6: Validated ✅

Data Centers are all located in France.

Reuse of waste heat

Criterion 8.7: Not validated ☑️

Criterion 8.8: Validated ✅

In addition, Cegedim is aiming for ISO 14001 and 15001 certification. Cegedim hosts "hot" and "cold" data separately, with different storage classes.

Criterion 8.9: Validated ✅

Paris La Défense duplicates data only when necessary with Shadow replication of certain environments.

Offset calculations and asynchronous updates

Checkpoint 8.10: Not validated ☑️

9 Algorithm

Justification of training phase

Criterion 9.1: Validated ✅

The digital service has determined that it is not necessary to use algorithms or artificial intelligence.

Characteristics of the learning phase

Criterion 9.2: Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/on the site.

Limiting the amount of training required

Criterion 9.3: Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/on the site.

Collection of data used for the learning phase

Criterion 9.4 : Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/on the site.e

Frequency of updates and re-training

Criterion 9.5: Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/on the site.

Compression methods for models used in the training phase

Criterion 9.6: Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/site.

Model compression methods used during the training phase

Criterion 9.7: Not applicable - The criterion concerns content or functionality that does not exist on the page/on the site.