Sustainability 2022 #2910
Comments
rviscomi
added
help wanted
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@cqueern @gerrymcgovernireland you've expressed an interest in a sustainability chapter before. This chapter could use coauthors, reviewers, and analysts if you still have the interest and time! @ldevernay has stepped up to author the chapter 🎉 |
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@tunetheweb @rviscomi I'd love to put my hand up as an analyst, though will need guidance when it comes to querying the dataset. @mrchrisadams would you also be interested in contributing? |
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Yes, definitely interested if there’s any way I can help
From: Rick Viscomi ***@***.***>
Sent: Thursday 14 April 2022 04:41
To: HTTPArchive/almanac.httparchive.org ***@***.***>
Cc: gerrymcgovernireland ***@***.***>; Mention ***@***.***>
Subject: Re: [HTTPArchive/almanac.httparchive.org] Sustainability 2022 (Issue #2910)
@cqueern <https://github.com/cqueern> @gerrymcgovernireland <https://github.com/gerrymcgovernireland> you've expressed an interest in a sustainability chapter before. This chapter could use coauthors, reviewers, and analysts if you still have the interest and time!
@ldevernay <https://github.com/ldevernay> has stepped up to author the chapter 🎉
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This enthusiasm is awesome! I'm really eager to work with you all! |
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Hi folks. I'd be happy to contribute as a reviewer at least, given those timelines. I'll ask internally to see if there's anyone who might be able to contribute in other roles. |
I'd love to support as a Reviewer. Thanks. Looking forward to working with everyone. |
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I'm curious what this will cover? |
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In my opinion, the point would be to start with insights on the environmental footprint of digital then focus on sustainability applied to websites. Which tools to use to monitor/measure, where to find best practices (and how to prioritize them). The idea would also be to highlight the links to other topics (Performance, Accessibility, Privacy, etc) and briefly explain how to go further (design reviews, measuring other metrics, setting an environmental budget, etc). Also : state of the art regarding repositories of best practices and tools to calculate the environmental impact (and where to go from here). |
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These are all great points to cover. Some possible added suggestions:
1. If there was some way we could identify page ‘waste’ that could be useful. This might include unused CSS, JS, poor coding that is slowing things down and thus wasting energy, poorly optimized images, etc. We could give good tips on reducing such waste.
2. In the analysis I’ve been doing, over 90% of the energy impacts are either in the creation of the page or during its use. In popular sites, the vast majority of energy occurs during the page use.
3. There have been interesting studies on the energy impact of various computer languages, with JavaScript being found to be 4.5 times more energy intense than C, for example. I wonder might there be a way to create and energy hierarchy for JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. In this way we could guide designers and developers to use the least energy intense option if given a choice. I wonder are there ways to identify design elements that are typically done in JS, for example, that could be done in, say, CSS
4. This is probably out of scope, but typically 80% of CO2 and other negative impacts are caused during the manufacture of the digital devices and network architecture. I think if we wanted to deliver a true and total figure of the environmental impact of the Web, we should consider some accounting for the devices.
Tim Frick of Mightybytes and Tom Greenwood of Wholegrain Digital are two people who huge pioneering work in this space. Perhaps it would be worth reaching out to them.
From: LaurentDev ***@***.***>
Sent: Thursday 14 April 2022 15:27
To: HTTPArchive/almanac.httparchive.org ***@***.***>
Cc: gerrymcgovernireland ***@***.***>; Mention ***@***.***>
Subject: Re: [HTTPArchive/almanac.httparchive.org] Sustainability 2022 (Issue #2910)
In my opinion, the point would be to start with insights on the environmental footprint of digital then focus on sustainability applied to websites. Which tools to use to monitor/measure, where to find best practices (and how to prioritize them).
Based on this, analysis of the main proxy metrics for environmental impacts : page weight and number of request (most often use to calculate environmental indicators through various models), explore how to use proxy metrics (such as Core Web Vitals) and finally which other metrics could used to check on sustainability best practices (image format, inclusion of third-party, minification, compression, cache, lazy-loading, etc).
The idea would also be to highlight the links to other topics (Performance, Accessibility, Privacy, etc) and briefly explain how to go further (design reviews, measuring other metrics, setting an environmental budget, etc).
Also : state of the art regarding repositories of best practices and tools to calculate the environmental impact (and where to go from here).
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Great points @gerrymcgovernireland ! Introduction Most of the impact comes from user devices, mostly because their fabrication is very impactful. What we can do about that is to reduce the impact of digital services (and change the way we think about digital as being immaterial and environmentally friendly by default). Evaluating the environmental impact of websites Reducing the impact Analysis by Metrics Checking for the usage of sustainability best practices on the web This covers most of your points, I think. On best practices, we should add "limit/avoid animations" with a focus on avoiding JS in favor of CSS for "essential" animations. |
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I sent a message to Tom yesterday and another to Tim this morning, hope they will have some time for this! On the impact being mostly on devices, I totally agree and that's what the studies mentioned on my previous comments illustrate. |
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Hi All, Just getting caught up here. Look forward to collaborating with you all. Per some of the points brought up earlier in this thread: For the Sustainable Web Design model, we based our consumer device use numbers mostly on the Andrae study, which estimates that at 52% of the system with repeat visitors using 25% and loading 2% of data: https://sustainablewebdesign.org/calculating-digital-emissions/ I believe this is reflected in the Green Web Foundation's CO2.js as well, correct @mrchrisadams? Per @gerrymcgovernireland's suggestion to tag waste, we're doing this in the new version of Ecograder by identifying how much of a page's emissions impact is due to uncompressed images, unused code, animations, etc. Happy to discuss details if anyone's interested. Our goal is to launch that a week from today, though work on this will be ongoing. |
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@timfrick : great to have you onboard! This new feature from Ecograder sounds awesome! I would love to have more info on this. I somehow missed the article on calculating digital emissions, I will read this. |
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Dear contributors, here is the document containing the outline (WIP) : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g1ACWRTAzTlcaKKODNASLkXe4zquF-XR5oHh0GfayP8/edit#heading=h.orr5h1m9v3cm |
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Hello All.
Are we suggesting an analysis and discussion of the sustainability or environmental impacts of hardware used to browse the web? I don't believe that would be in scope as the Archive focuses on how websites are built. We don't collect and have data about the fabrication of user devices (or even user agent data) for us to comment on. But perhaps I misunderstand your suggestion. |
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This should not be the aim of the analysis (other studies do that pretty well) but we should keep this fact in mind because it is a huge part of the reason why digital services should be as sustainable as possible. The reasoning here is :
This makes Web Almanac the best place to study if websites today are sustainable and show how to reduce their environmental impact with sobriety and efficiency considerations. |
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That’s great to hear about the messages to Tom and Tim
Sounds fascinating that you’re gathering this data on the devices. I read the article from your link. It’s very impressive. I know Caleb has pointed out correctly that the device is out of scope for this project, but I would love to chat with you more about it as a side conversation, if you had time.
From: LaurentDev ***@***.***>
Sent: Friday 15 April 2022 08:30
To: HTTPArchive/almanac.httparchive.org ***@***.***>
Cc: gerrymcgovernireland ***@***.***>; Mention ***@***.***>
Subject: Re: [HTTPArchive/almanac.httparchive.org] Sustainability 2022 (Issue #2910)
I sent a message to Tom yesterday and another to Tim this morning, hope they will have some time for this!
On the impact being mostly on devices, I totally agree and that's what the studies mentioned on my previous comments illustrate.
This is why, in the company where I currently work, we also gather metrics on real devices. On smartphones, this is a good way to measure the depletion of the battery, which allows us, through an environmental model, to evaluate the global environmental impact of a digital service and the share that is due to device manufacturing.
As of today, this is still (unfortunately) a proprietary methodology and model. More details here : https://greenspector.com/en/environmental-footprint-methodology/
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These are good contextual points. I think we can note that heavier and more processing intense pages often contribute to forcing people to upgrade their devices sooner than they would if the pages were lighter and less processing intense. I think this would be good context, without having to go into any research or analysis of specific device impacts.
From: LaurentDev ***@***.***>
Sent: Friday 15 April 2022 14:50
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Cc: gerrymcgovernireland ***@***.***>; Mention ***@***.***>
Subject: Re: [HTTPArchive/almanac.httparchive.org] Sustainability 2022 (Issue #2910)
This should not be the aim of the analysis (other studies do that pretty well) but we should keep this fact in mind because it is a huge part of the reason why digital services should be as sustainable as possible.
The reasoning here is :
* Most of the environmental impact of digital comes from manufacturing our devices
* This gets worse because people around the world own lots of devices and change them too often
* Why do we change our devices? Most of the time, because they lag
* How do we prevent that? By making digital service more sober and efficient => sustainability
This makes Web Almanac the best place to study if websites today are sustainable and show how to reduce their environmental impact with sobriety and efficiency considerations.
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Great to see you involved, Tim!
And it would be great to hear more about how you’re identify page waste
From: LaurentDev ***@***.***>
Sent: Friday 15 April 2022 13:24
To: HTTPArchive/almanac.httparchive.org ***@***.***>
Cc: gerrymcgovernireland ***@***.***>; Mention ***@***.***>
Subject: Re: [HTTPArchive/almanac.httparchive.org] Sustainability 2022 (Issue #2910)
@timfrick <https://github.com/timfrick> : great to have you onboard!
This new feature from Ecograder sounds awesome! I would love to have more info on this.
I somehow missed the article on calculating digital emissions, I will read this.
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Happy to chat about that at any time, @gerrymcgovernireland |
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For the Analysis by Metrics section of this chapter, I feel we could also look at aligning with the CMS, eCommerce, and Jamstack chapters to examine how the different (top??) platforms in those categories perform in terms of sustainability. Could look at median size of pages, and also hosting options (can self-host? does managed hosting use known green web hosts?). |
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FYI we've created a I'd also encourage everyone to request edit access to the planning doc and iterate on the chapter outline there. |
I think you are making some assumptions here that have no research to back them up. People don't always change devices because of lag. I think the regional factors and many other have an important role. So IMHO this assumption is just speculation. Making your digital service, in our particular context here the web, more sober and efficient doesn't translate into improved sustainability. I think we need a proper definition on what sober and efficient actually means. Or what do we mean exactly by sustainability. @timfrick and the team behind https://sustainablewebdesign.org/calculating-digital-emissions/ are able to calculate a number based on volume of data over the wire. I think this is wrong. If you build the most performant website with LH scores in 100s and under 2s load time for 3G connections doesn't mean that is sustainable. Sustainability is the ability to maintain or support a process continuously over time. This is not just about CO2 emissions. It is about everything. You can be performant, but if each change to the digital service requires a full rewrite, that means is not sustainable. And so on, this can be applied to the entire life cycle of a digital service. If we are to think about CO2 emission, because this is where most people look at when they think about sustainability, I think we are focusing on the wrong thing. As I mentioned above, data volume over the wire doesn't have a direct correlation with energy consumption. A persons router uses more or less the same amount of energy under heavy traffic vs normal / idle. Even the Anders-Andrae study says that.
There is also a study from Cisco that reaches the same conclusion, volume of data is not a major factor in energy consumption. There have been articles around how Netflix is killing the planet using the same metric of volume of data over the wire, that have been debunked . @ldevernay As you said most of the environmental impact of digital comes from manufacturing our devices among many other things. When thinking about the actual digital service, a website, the device screen is the biggest energy consumer. Which means in a simplistic way that there are only 2 ways to fix it, improve the energy consumption of those screens or keep your users away from them. First can't happen in a "sustainable way" due to adoption and cost, the other it is in our hands to fix. And this is where web performance is critical. Make it fast and you are one step closer. But if your UX is poor you are negating your performance improvements, as the user spends more time using that digital service to fulfil a task. Fixing the UX also is not the end of the road as there are other factors in play. Imagine if TikTok was a web app, highly optimised with an amazing web perf grade (images and videos compressed in an ideal world). Would we call that digital service sustainable for the environment (energy consumption to be more precise)? I would say not, because spending hours with your screen ON watching videos drains your battery and so on. On the same note, if I have a poor performant web site, but all my users power their devices with solar, would you still consider it as performing poorly on a sustainability index? All studies done in the past, don't factor enough how energy production looks like in the future. And when they do they need to guess what will happen. For the first time, wind power eclipsed both coal and nuclear in the U.S for 1 day in March. In the UK is happening more often. IMHO Sustainability should not be a chapter in itself for web almanc. Perhaps it can be included into various chapters in that particular context. |
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Another example where I think that volume of data over the wire is wrong @gerrymcgovernireland posted this a while back https://twitter.com/gerrymcgovern/status/1494225017839697920
The assumption here is that if those tracking cookies disappear overnight 11442 metric tonnes of CO2 emission would be gone. This is unrealistic considering the devices that were moving those cookies behind the scenes will still be using the same amount of energy because as it was said before electric power use is actually rather independent of handled traffic. |
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Hi, thanks for the invitation @ldevernay - I'm just putting my name forward here that I may be able to assist as an author and/or reviewer. I am very short of time at the moment so I can't promise my availability, but would like to help if I can. |
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@mrchrisadams @cqueern @Djohn12 @tpgreenwood : Don't forget to add yourself to the google doc and to join #web-almanac-sustainability on Slack: (for those of you who want to join as authors, I don't think it is necessary to join as a reviewer too, it is implied) We seem to have a full team, thanks everyone! (I will be off for a few days starting today + business trip next week so my response time might be a little disrupted) |
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Hi folks, I'd like to offer some time as a reviewer if I'm not too late. |
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@hanopcan : this would be great! |
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Hi, we're having a kickoff meeting next week to get to know each other and work on the outline. |
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If possible, @4upz and I would like to volunteer as Analysts. |
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Excellent. Invited you to the project there. |
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@ldevernay I think we're good to tick off Milestone 1 in the initial comment? We've a good solid outline there, and although it may change still I think we've enough to say we've reached the milestone. |
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That's true, thanks @tunetheweb ! |
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Hey all, apologies I've been a bit quiet lately, but been travelling and not had too much Almanac time lately. How are we looking now? Milestone 2's date has passed by quite a bit now, but the crawl is still going on (not sure if you saw Rick's update on Slack in the Web Almanac channel?), so that gives us a bit of time to catch up. We didn't need to add any new Custom Metrics for this chapter, so we just need to open a draft PR with a list of queries to write to complete that Milestone (note you do not need to have the queries written to complete Milestone 2 - just have a list of them). You can see example open PRs for the other chapters already open. It looks like you've a list of them in the Doc, so just need to firm up the exact metric we want for each of them, and then create a draft PR with the checklist. @fershad @camcash17 @4upz as the analysts for this chapter can one of you do this? This will also focus you to question the rest of the chapter team as to exactly what's wanted if a metric is vague, unclear or ambiguous. |
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Hey @tunetheweb : as soon as this is done, we can settle to see who writes what. Even without the metrics, we should be able to give some flesh to this chapter. |
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@fershad @camcash17 @4upz any progress on that draft PR? most of the other chapters have theirs up now. |
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Hi @tunetheweb, sorry we've been away for most of this week. But currently still working on it, and hoping to have a draft done by early next week! |
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Ok, just to be clear the current Milestone is just to have the list of queries - not the queries written themselves. You’ve a little more time for them. Just want to make sure everyone’s clear on what queries need written. |
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Hey all, I see #2989 has been raised. Think we're ready to check off milestone 2 @ldevernay ? Also just to make you aware the data is all i there now (apart from parsed_css if looking for CSS data) so you're good to start querying @fershad @camcash17 @4upz ! Do reach out if you need any help with queryies. |
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@tunetheweb : yes, I think we can check milestone 2. |
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OK I've completed the review of the request PR, made a few tweaks (took a couple of liberties, but think it's for the better!), ran (or reran where necessary) all the queries, saved the data, created some charts I think presents the data nicely (though let me know if you want other charts). So I think we're all done with the analysis phase. Over to the writers to copy and past in the charts or data they want to use, and finish writing the chapter! |
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@tunetheweb : this looks awesome! |
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The chapter has been converted and edited and is available in the below staging links:
Last call for any changes before it's merged! It's looking great so well done all involved. |
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The chapter looks great. Hats off to all the Authors. I especially like the Actions You Can Take section. A great list for site owners to get started on, added to the backlog, and make the impactful change for a more sustainable web we are hoping for. Great work All. |
Sustainability 2022
If you're interested in contributing to the Sustainability chapter of the 2022 Web Almanac, please reply to this issue and indicate which role or roles best fit your interest and availability: author, reviewer, analyst, and/or editor.
Content team
Expand for more information about each role 👀
Note: The time commitment for each role varies by the chapter's scope and complexity as well as the number of contributors.
For an overview of how the roles work together at each phase of the project, see the Chapter Lifecycle doc.
Milestone checklist
0. Form the content team
1. Plan content
2. Gather data
3. Validate results
4. Draft content
5. Publication
Chapter resources
Refer to these 2022 Sustainability resources throughout the content creation process:
📄 Google Docs for outlining and drafting content
🔍 SQL files for committing the queries used during analysis
📊 Google Sheets for saving the results of queries
📝 Markdown file for publishing content and managing public metadata
💬 #web-almanac-sustainability on Slack for team coordination
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