A Developer's Start to Sustainable Tech: Tools, Metrics, and First Steps
This blog will share some tools to measure carbon footprint, choosing a green hosting provider, why we’re doing it and why you should too.
Finalist and I, and tech
I am someone who checks nutritional facts, scores, bio, fair trade, etc. while purchasing products. But, I don’t know how to do the same for the technologies I use, and how to even begin with the software I create, to objectively improve in terms of sustainability.
When I first joined, one vivid memory is the question from one of the leads: “Do you know what our motto means? ‘Maatschappelijk Relevante IT’”. My Dutch was not quite there yet. If yours is not either, it translates to “Socially Relevant IT”. It resonated with me.
Finalist is the type of company who cares about people: all people and their well being, not just employees. Technology is just the means to an end, and our goal is always to create good.
Why Tech Sustainability Matters?
Following this spirit, it only makes sense to me to introduce these efforts that I take in my personal life, also in the work we do. If you’re still reading, I assume you share the same drive. Otherwise, consider the benefits of improved efficiency and cost savings.
Being ahead in regulatory compliance also matters since the EU aims for carbon neutrality by 2050. If your company is big enough, they must already be working on their Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). If your company falls under SMEs, the reporting is voluntary albeit encouraged.
So, how do we start making sustainability efforts in tech? And then track the results of said efforts, whether for ourselves, our communities, our clients, our government? Let's start with something measurable…
Measuring Your Website's Environmental Impact
There are some discrepancies in how different tools will score on environmental impact. Let’s have a look at Finalist’s website:
Website CarbonEco GraderReport linkhttps://www.websitecarbon.com/website/finalist-nl/https://ecograder.com/report/r0MGBGIR2XOfLiWAOMhhiZUrRatingBDScored better than68% of pages globally57% better than graded sites
Figure : Webcarbon Impact report for finalist.nl – Rating B, above global average
Figure : Ecograder Impact report for finalist.nl – 74 out of 100. Scored 57% better than all URLs crawled by Ecograder.
When you get your own report, there will be some general recommendations to start exploring: Page Weight, UX Design and Green Hosting. If you’re a developer there are many resources which can prove interesting, my plan going forward is to start tracking our emissions with the already available libraries, from there on, we can objectively make changes for the better in terms of performance, resource consumption, old hardware support, awareness, etc.
Nonetheless, something which seems to have a huge impact on these scores is your hosting provider. You can quickly check here if your own provider is green or not, and find a new one by using this directory.
The green software foundation has created a maturiy matrix to qualify organisations. Most of us are in the very first level of maturity (if at all). So, for now I guess you are a 99% likely to also score your organisation as an “Aspiring - Level 1”, samesies 🤜🏼🤛🏾.
I will keep writing about this journey in upcoming blogs, and perhaps update here some in detail links when needed. Feel free to contact us to provide feedback or if you’re interested on getting help with your own journey.
Closing thoughts
Small conscious choices in hosting, resource use, and development practices create measurable environmental and cost benefits.
As one of my respected colleagues at Finalist said: “I don’t expect you or anyone to know everything, but with all our knowledge together we can do great things”, I’m paraphrasing because I don’t remember exactly each word, but the idea is the same.
There is still so much more for me and many others to learn, read, and act, but I’m very excited about the impact we can have. Don't be discouraged by your current score if it's bad, as they say acceptance is the first step. Can't improve what you can't measure.
Find that green host, track your footprint, spread the word and keep improving.
Some organisations to join
The Green Software Foundation https://greensoftware.foundation/ https://www.thegreenwebfoundation.org