sustainableweb-ig

W3C Sustainable Web Interest Group

Welcome to the repository for the W3C Sustainable Web Interest Group.

Schedule

Date Details
Mar 15 2026 Wide review and other W3C horizontal review updates are ready for inclusion in WSG.
Apr 15 2026 TAG updates ready for inclusion in WSG.
IG begins work on new charter (6 months planning).
May 15 2026 IG completes initial work on supplements prior to WSG submission.
IG finalizes workflow changes it can affect, publishing an approach so that other groups can adopt.
Jun 15 2026 WSG is submitted to W3C for NOTE status.
IG begins discussion of educational materials, outreach, tooling, etc, to broaden awareness.
Jul 15 2026 WSG is readied and submitted for STMT (statement) status (See reminder for Chairs/Editors).
Agree on finalized charter, submit to strategy team for review (HR / TiLT, etc), then submit to AC.
Oct 31 2026 Our charter ends.

Note: Horizontal review is ongoing and wide review from external parties have been accepted at all stages of WSGs development.

Reminder for Chairs/Editors: 6.4.3 of W3C Process states that during the statement review period, notes must NOT be updated. As editing of any file WILL trigger a new spec release in Echidna (automated publishing), NO merges of PR’s / direct edits should be allowed during this phase.

Statistics

Work

The chartered focus of the W3C Sustainable Web Interest Group is the development of Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) and its deliverables.

Links to relevant documents (based on the CG Draft Report) can be found below.

Guidelines:

Name Status Date
Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) W3C Group Note Draft 03 Jul 2026

Other Deliverables:

Name Status Date
Sustainable Tooling And Reporting (STAR) W3C Editors Draft 03 Jul 2026
WSG Resources W3C Editors Draft 03 Jul 2026
Web Sustainability Laws and Policies W3C Editors Draft 03 Jul 2026
WSG Impact Measurement W3C Editors Draft 26 June 2026
WSG Benefits W3C Editors Draft 03 Jul 2026
WSG At A Glance W3C Editors Draft 03 Jul 2026
WSG Quick Reference W3C Editors Draft 03 Jul 2026
WSG JSON API JSON API 03 Jul 2026
WSG Impact JSON API JSON API 03 Jul 2026
STAR JSON API JSON API 03 Jul 2026
STAR Test Suite Test Suite 03 Jul 2026

Mission

Digital Sustainability is an evolving field that is complex and undergoing significant change due to technological advances such as Artificial Intelligence and legislative shifts. The complexity of these rapid changes increases the need and urgency to provide guidance for those expected to meet climate-related goals and targets.

The mission of the W3C Sustainable Web Interest Group is to improve digital sustainability so that the Web works better for all people and the planet.

We do this through advancing the development of the Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG), its supplementary materials, and advocacy work (in digital sustainability) to educate and advise on any implementations of our work and its importance in the context of their organizations.

See also the Sustainable Web Interest Group Charter.

History

Timeline of the W3C Sustainable Web Interest Group's history from Community Group to it's current status.

Formed in 2013, the Sustainable Web Design Community Group brought together like-minded individuals from various backgrounds with a passion for sustainability. While it originally served as a method of sharing useful resources on digital sustainability, the need to do more for both people and the planet urged the group to start regular Zoom meetings, and a plan was formed.

Organizing into five committees (based on the four categories noted in the WSGs and a team focused on metrics), the community group spent three years carefully writing and cultivating the Web Sustainability Guidelines into its current Draft Report.

As a W3C Interest group we continue the work of this Community Group, further improving upon the hard work that has been achieved over this period.

Participate

Frequently Asked Questions

What work is the Interest Group producing?

We are currently creating a set of international guidelines that aim to advocate advisory best practices around digital sustainability. With coverage around user-experience design, Web development, development operations, and business/product strategy; the Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) aims to prioritize people and the planet in the product creation cycle.

Using evidence-based methodologies, this set of guidelines will enable implementers to reduce their digital carbon footprint and practice sustainable design and development, meeting regulatory compliance targets as well as industry best practices.

Who should participate in this group?

The Sustainable Web Interest Group encourages active participation from a diverse community. You should consider participating in this Interest Group, in particular, if you are in one of the following communities:

  • Vendors of Web browsers seeking to improve the sustainability of the browsing experience.
  • Organizations and agencies that focus on marketing, web design / development, devops, and related digital services.
  • Individuals or organizations with a background or interest in promoting and / or implementing digital sustainability.
  • Sustainability-specific organizations, especially those looking to improve reporting and practices or those that serve our industry.
  • Software vendors or open source projects developing digital sustainability solutions utilizing the WSGs.
  • Government organizations seeking to standardize or develop policies around digital sustainability.
  • Academic researchers or scientists with an interest in digital sustainability and eco-design.
  • Industry association or standards body representatives.
How can I join the group as an official participant?

Methods

If you wish to contribute, the below methods are how our group facilitates the delivery of our activities.

GitHub

This Interest Group primarily conducts its technical work through GitHub. We welcome contributions through issue-raising and pull requests on our publicly available repositories for our Interest Group, the Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG), and our Impact Measurement Framework.

Feedback

We welcome individuals who are unaffiliated with our group to provide feedback on our work through whatever means they feel will help encourage the improvement of our work or early adoption.

Examples of this may include:

Meetings

Typically, participation in Face-to-face meetings and telephone conferences relating to the Interest Group is open just to W3C Members and Invited Experts. IG members can get details of meetings taking place through this calendar and by examining our meeting agenda, also available in Google Docs.

We use Zoom for meetings, and some people may use video. We also record meetings for those unable to attend. Please consider this if choosing to participate in our events.

Slack

We coordinate regularly over Slack. We have regular discussions in the #sustainability channel with other members who have an interest in the topic of digital sustainability. You can join the Slack community through this invite.

Note: If you have any questions regarding the Interest Group, feel free to DM a chair or editor and we will get back to you. We’re friendly people, honest!

Mailing List

To keep up-to-date with our activity, make sure you’re signed up to our public mailing list (as this is where major announcements get posted).

Events

Our Interest Group may on occasion choose to run workshops to help organizations, groups, and individuals better understand how to meet the targets laid out in the Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG). In addition, as part of our outreach efforts participants may choose to speak at or attend various events to spread the word about or gain industry feedback on our work.

You can find more information about our outreach efforts, and where we spot external implementations, papers, articles, newsletters, media, events etc relating to Web Sustainability Guidelines and it’s deliverables in our Campaign Toolkit.

Participants

The co-chairs of the Sustainable Web Interest Group are:

Lead Editor of the Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) is:

Editor of the Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) is:

The W3C Team Contact for the group is:

See also the list of participants involved in the Interest Group.

JSON APIs

We have three JSON APIs which are kept in sync with the changes occurring within our specification, impact and STAR.

These documents are reachable via GitHub pages and can be queried using JavaScript to embed our data within your client of choice.

WSG (guidelines.json)

category[1].guidelines[0].guideline = "Identify, assess, disclose, review, and mitigate sustainability impacts"

WSG Impact (impact.json)

category[1].guidelines[0].impactRatings[0].people = "Indeterminate"

STAR (star.json)

category[1].techniques[0].title = "Produce a List of Factors To Monitor for Sustainability Impacts"

One method of reaching the API could be through code similar to the below (customize to your requirements):

fetch("https://w3c.github.io/sustainableweb-wsg/guidelines.json")
  .then((res) => res.json())
  .then((data) => {
    console.log(`The First UX Guideline Title is ${data.category[1].guidelines[0].guideline}`); });

Note: To match a WSG guideline to a STAR technique, you can match the guideline testable anchor hash (WSG JSON API) to the technique id (STAR JSON API).

Test Suite

We have a Test Suite which is used to showcase machine testability (as denoted in STAR) for Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG). The template structure for the file uses common W3C conventions for test cases to maintain interoperability for tooling that wishes to align our work with their own.

Key concepts of note include:

Resources

Below are some handy links for contributors to our project:

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