Open Source Ethics and Values Part 3: Environmentally Conscious

Sustainable server management

• Use of ISO-certified and carbon-neutral data centres
• Policies to minimise electricity usage in server farms
• Regular assessment of server efficiency and necessity

Even though this often can increase the cost to us, PTFS Europe only make use of data centres with good environmental policies, such as being powered by renewable energy or carbon offsetting.

Where possible, we aim to maximise server utilisation, reduce hardware requirements, and consolidate workloads, thereby decreasing the energy required to run the data centre. We use energy-efficient server and storage hardware, such as servers with low-power CPUs or SSDs, which consume less energy than traditional hard drives. Our database design eliminates duplicate copies of data. Deduplication reduces the amount of storage required by removing redundant information, lowering both the energy needed to store the data and the overall storage capacity. 

Our backup copies are archived and transferred to cold storage rather than keeping everything in high-performance storage systems. Frequently accessed data is kept on faster, more energy-efficient systems (such as SSDs). We also implement well-defined data retention policies to regularly review and delete obsolete data, reducing storage demand over time.

The open source software we support can run on a wide range of hardware, including older or less powerful devices. This flexibility allows users to extend the lifespan of their existing hardware rather than constantly upgrading to meet the requirements of resource-intensive proprietary software. 

“At PTFS Europe, our biggest impact on the planet is our electricity usage. Our servers exist in farms that consume many megajoules of energy, so we’ve defined strict policies on ensuring our servers exist within ISO-certified and carbon-neutral data centres.”

Sustainable work culture and travel

• Virtual company
• Avoiding resource waste in daily operations
• Bundling orders to reduce delivery journeys
• Prioritising sustainable travel
• Staff device recycling

PTFS Europe is a virtual company and has been since its inception in 2007. All of our staff work from home offices. We make maximum use of virtual meeting technologies, which reduces staff and customer travel commitments.  Our policy is to support the use of predominantly electronic administration systems and documentation to reduce printer ink and use of paper. With a single small rented Head Office suite used to store equipment and receive post, the company has minimal physical office environmental impacts.

We work with hardware and software vendors that prioritise sustainability in their products and services. This could include using energy-efficient devices, eco-friendly materials, and responsible supply chain practices. 

We implement practices that extend the lifespan of hardware, such as repairs and upgrades, instead of frequent replacements. Additionally, we ensure that old hardware used by our team is properly recycled to minimise environmental impact.

We are, however, part of a global community in open source, so when essential business does require us to take flights, we select options to use bio-airfuels or to carbon offset.

“As we work from home, I am responsible for my own carbon footprint in my home office. When travelling I need to consider the most economical mode of transport from both a cost and environmental perspective.”

Globally, many open source developers (like ourselves) contribute to projects remotely, reducing the need for physical office spaces and commuting. It is hard to evaluate the carbon saving of this global community – but it would be significant.

“In a world where we are using a huge amount of resources, as individuals, we can only do a tiny bit. However, to me, that means doing my part  where I can and trying to avoid using the world’s resources where I feel it isn’t absolutely necessary. Could be something as simple as bundling up 5 Amazon orders into one to ensure there is only one journey from the factory. We can apply these principles to the way we work also by, individually, making small choices.”

Environmentally friendly coding practices

• Refactoring and optimising code to reduce energy consumption
• Removing redundant code to improve efficiency
• Using automated testing (e.g., Jenkins) to ensure sustainability metrics
• Balancing new technology with impact

We aim to optimise software to use fewer resources. Clean, efficient code reduces the computational overhead needed to process and transfer data; ensuring efficient use of resources can significantly cut down on energy usage.

Open source software, by its very nature, is reusable and encourages the recycling of code components. With a proprietary software environment, each vendor could be writing the same code multiple times unaware that someone else has written it. With open source software there is one piece of code utilised by many. 

It’s also key to adapt and extend existing open source projects for underrepresented countries in the Global South. There are huge parallels between the open source way and what our wider society needs to do to achieve a more sustainable future. Being more open and inclusive is a key part of that.

“Employing techniques such as refactoring, removing redundant code, and optimising existing algorithms leads to less energy consumption during code execution. This is something we do whenever we find the opportunity to.”

We design our digital platforms to be lightweight, minimising the amount of data they require to function. This reduces the energy needed for both storage and data transfers. Efficient code, smaller images, and fewer requests help achieve this.

“In the Koha community we use Jenkins, which automates the testing and deployment processes, ensuring sustainability metrics are met without manual intervention.”

PTFS Europe and the global open source community are always seeking to advance the capabilities of new technologies – however we remain mindful of balancing the excitement of new technology with its likely impacts. This applies strongly to the use of AI – with data and power hungry server farms required to upkeep this technology. We have so far taken a very pragmatic approach to the benefits of utilising large language models, especially generative. Being in the library sphere we are very aware of the ways in which AI may help our customers, but this has to be balanced by the ethical concerns raised by its use; not only environmental, but also factors such as bias, hallucination and copyright. PTFS Europe has created an internal code of ethics for working with AI and will continue to evaluate cost versus benefit before utilising AI in our code.

“We don’t blow energy on pointless AI, we keep things simple and we use some common sense.”

“We do think about where we source our services – hosting, etc. – very much with the environmental impact in mind. We haven’t rushed blindly and in a frenzy down the AI rabbit-hole irrespective of environmental and economic costs. We will employ any new and emerging technologies in a way that takes note of the potential environmental and social impact.”

Continuous improvement, getting public value

• Commitment to adapting policies as environmental knowledge evolves
• Public procurement concerns

PTFS Europe we are not content to sit on our laurels as a net zero company, we constantly seek ways to save energy and do more. We horizon scan for new technologies and methods that would benefit the environment and we are small and agile enough to utilise these in our work and procedures quickly.

Being a net zero company means that the current methods of addressing environmental impact in tenders, especially for public libraries, can be highly problematic for us and in fact benefits the biggest polluters. Most local government procurement has a requirement for a section of the tender to be dedicated to carbon reduction – which is a very good thing! However, the method is often to require companies to show the £ value of carbon reduction promises. This is almost guaranteed to benefit the largest and most polluting companies – a small net zero company such as PTFS Europe cannot produce the “savings” in comparison.

We work hard to advise procurers and write to members of parliament about these concerns and we hope that future iterations of the government procurement guidelines will factor in this concern. But if you have influence over a procurement – please don’t rely purely on carbon reduction value at the expense of those with excellent environmental credentials.

Conclusion

“Environmental consciousness is about considering every action’s impact on our blue world.”

As with sustainability, open source is an effort to offset the dominant values that perpetuate systems that have been so harmful to our planet; namely, short-term growth and the extraction of profit above all else. 

Our open source solutions allow us to prioritise digital technology’s application to the things that really matter. Like any precious resource, digital technology has growth limits and is not as abundant and cheap as we have perhaps been led to believe. The true cost is seen in communities and ecosystems that are already suffering across the globe.

Together with the libraries we work with, PTFS Europe continues to push for the changes we want to see in the world, so that we can all enjoy the benefits of digital technology for the long-term, sustainably. 

PTFS Europe believes we can do good business whilst being good people.

We believe the future for libraries (and the planet) is OPEN.