this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2024
163 points (86.9% liked)

Asklemmy

43979 readers
786 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Fad or relevant?

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] davel@lemmy.ml 162 points 9 months ago (6 children)

Marketing bullshit that appeals to some low-information, vibes-based liberals.

[–] TakiMinase@slrpnk.net 74 points 9 months ago

Greenwashing for profit.

[–] naticus@lemmy.world 38 points 9 months ago

Pretty much. Being liberal myself, it drives me insane seeing the absolute triple people will buy into. Websites aren't the things to target, let's look at things like cruise ships and transitioning to renewable energy.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 138 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Greenwashing, can't believe this even is a question

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 45 points 9 months ago (10 children)

Plus, it ignores that most websites couldn't reliably tell you how much carbon emissions they'd be responsible for individually. That's a super-complicated question to answer.

[–] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 7 points 9 months ago

Part of the issue is that electricity is fungible. If I consume one watt-hour from my grid, I don't get to decide where it comes from. The mix of generation is the same for everyone on that grid. Even if you segregate the grids in order to vaguely guarantee that you are only consuming green sources, you're also making the "dirty" grid cheaper and thus easier for everyone else to use, and there are plenty of ways of capitalizing on that difference that nullifies the segregation. It's a bit like arbitrage.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] weeeeum@lemmy.world 68 points 9 months ago

I personally think it's kind of dumb as hell. I'm not sure how you would know but also websites are a tiny fraction of emissions. If you want to lower emissions it's much more effective to go for legislation local to you.

[–] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 45 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So uh. What the fuck does that mean?

Stupid and meaningless.

[–] Shirasho@lemmings.world 12 points 9 months ago (2 children)

If I had to take a wild guess giving benefit of the doubt it checks the total bytes downloaded and CPU usage to estimate electricity usage.

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

With a combination of checking which data centers its hosted out of and if they are using certified renewable energy etc

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That tells us almost nothing about a website's carbon impact. I could serve a 4k uhd movie from my personal website and it wouldn't even be 1% of the impact from Reddit for 1 second. We need to know how much traffic a site gets for those numbers to matter.

[–] Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

While I understand and agree with you, the obvious counterargument is how many people get serviced and the generated value of them being served. I mean people won't argue that a car is better than a bus because the car produces less carbon. What I think is the better way to highlight the ridiculousness of those icons, a newspaper website produces more carbon (if energy source is producing carbon) than a server that just return the certification icon. So newspaper website is worse? That is how this certification works... Low information density gets rewarded. Which is contra productive if the goal is an energy efficient web.

To be fair, the service in the screenshot, tries to estimate the average carbon over the year and collects data to improve estimated that counter some of my critic, but it doesn't fix the ignorance to the kind of data provided and rewards low data density to some degree

[–] Skelectus@suppo.fi 37 points 9 months ago (3 children)

If this encourages light, fast loading pages, I'm all for it.

[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 8 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The future is no JavaScript!!

[–] Skelectus@suppo.fi 4 points 9 months ago
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml 35 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Meaningless bread and circus created by capitalist elites to delude people into thinking we are more responsible than them for pollution. Wonder why these BS certifications do not get created outside of West... something something manufacturing consent media literacy

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] drathvedro@lemm.ee 34 points 9 months ago

My website is running off of spare resources on my 10w router, and yet my 30w monitor that I've been using for 10+ years still says that I've saved exactly 0.0 trees every time I turn it on. Thank you, now please fuck off with that bullshit.

[–] therealjcdenton@lemmy.zip 31 points 9 months ago (1 children)

What the hell is a green website

[–] Bronco1676@lemmy.ml 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] Patches@sh.itjust.works 9 points 9 months ago

Probably a better unit of measurement than this green washed bullshit.

[–] lemmus@lemmy.world 28 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Pretty sure taking a single billionaire’s jet out of the sky will make more of a difference than anything these certificates could achieve.

[–] Saprophyte@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

But he pays people who weren't going to cut down their trees to not cut down their trees so he can have a carbon neutral jet!

(The above sentence is an example of sarcasm.)

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] PlasmaDistortion@lemm.ee 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Whatever it is, it’s a joke. Things like this just take the focus off the people actually causing the problem.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] DessertStorms@kbin.social 18 points 9 months ago

Same as "carbon footprint" - meaningless greenwashed bullshit there to shift focus away from those responsible, and the true scale of the damage they're causing for money.

If anything - seeing that kind of certification would make me actively avoid a company because you know they're at best using it to virtue signal for profits, at worst and more likely, they're using it to cover up much much worse shit they're doing.

[–] Starfighter@discuss.tchncs.de 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Out of curiosity I've let it rate Low<-Tech Magazine, a website run on an ARM SBC powered exclusively with off-grid solar power, and that only achieves 87% / A.

Link to results

[–] Patches@sh.itjust.works 14 points 9 months ago

That is because they didn't pay their membership fee

[–] jonuno@slrpnk.net 8 points 9 months ago

Eheh nice one to test! If there's a 100% it should be that one

[–] belated_frog_pants@beehaw.org 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's completely negligible compared to industrial manufacturing, bitcoin mining, waste, etc.

Make a lighter website because no one gives a shit about a heavy one.

[–] MechanicalJester@lemm.ee 6 points 9 months ago

I recently saw it reported that Crypto was 2% of US electric use.

That's a whole lot of wasted processing, silicon, heat and energy.

[–] lorty@lemmy.ml 14 points 9 months ago

If ESG is anything to go by, just a greenwashing fad they'll drop as soon as it doesn't have the desired effect

[–] xkforce@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

The Carbon footprint of a website is hard to determine and given the examples posted in this thread, I would not trust their conclusions.

[–] lntl@lemmy.ml 12 points 9 months ago

relevant if it sabotages coal mining infrastructure

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 8 points 9 months ago

It is about as useful as a bullshit milkshake is to a vegan.

[–] Oha@lemmy.ohaa.xyz 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Huh? 1000013622
How tf can my website produce less than 0g pf emissions? 1000013624

[–] GiM@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ecosia plants trees for every search request. So technically it removes co2 every time you visit the site.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] pugsnroses77@sh.itjust.works 7 points 9 months ago

stupid but if it removes useless bloat and data farming im for it

[–] TengoHipo@lemm.ee 6 points 9 months ago

We are getting dumber

[–] plistig@feddit.de 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Is it too difficult to post some context?

[–] federalreverse@feddit.de 5 points 9 months ago

This appears to be the calculator: https://www.websitecarbon.com/

And it only appears to check the size of downloaded assets and then whether the hosting provider is known to use renewables. Indeed not terribly exhaustive or useful.

[–] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (11 children)

Is it ending capitalism? If not, it's greenwashing. Any action other than stopping the one thing fucking up our planet is a distraction.

load more comments (11 replies)
[–] ComradePupIvy@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 9 months ago

Irelevent greenwashing, nothing will change unless we solve the systematic problems, it does not matter what one website or person is doing

While I am at it recycling is a scam, and so is the individual carbon footprint

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Mostly seems a bit silly but I think if people were making any sort of large decisions based on it, I would probably raise an eyebrow. But I like the idea of people considering the environmental impact of everything they do. Crypto Bros sure could’ve used that lesson.

It’s not like it’s doing any harm unless people put too much stock into it. Like the energy star rating on my HVAC unit - it’s just information to me. It’s not like I’m making major decisions based off of it or getting the feel goods. No reason this can’t be like that.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] knobbysideup@sh.itjust.works 4 points 9 months ago

That's fucking stupid.

[–] markstos@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

For all the comments that say β€œthe real problem is…”: this is crisis and working on all emission sources contributes to a solution not just the biggest emitters.

Everything we online has an impact in the real world and there’s some value in reminding people that. And yes, some sites could be causing a lot emissions than others.

Some are powered by solar, others by coal.

ARM chips are more energy efficient than x86 and so on.

[–] Tangent5280@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You can invent the worlds most energy efficient CPU, put it on every server rack in the world, and all your progress will be undone by that one billionaire who decides they want international taco bell at 3 AM.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: next β€Ί