The Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) cover a wide range of recommendations to make web products and services more sustainable. These guidelines use planetary, people, and prosperity principles (the PPP approach) throughout the decision-making process, allowing users to minimize their environmental impact in various ways. These include user-centered design, performant web development, carbon-free infrastructure, sustainable business strategy, and, supported by measurability data, various combinations thereof. It should be noted that these guidelines will not address every possible mechanism or strategy to become more sustainable. These guidelines, which are notably web-focused, should be seen as the starting point of a sustainability journey that may ultimately cover other areas beyond the current scope, for example manufacturing or shipping of physical products. Following these guidelines will often make web content and services more accessible, usable, performant, and secure as a by-product.
It is highly recommended that you take a methodical approach in applying these guidelines. Rather than working through the entire document and broadly attempting to apply everything to your digital project or service, scroll through the table of contents to find a guideline that appeals to your skill set or that you feel comfortable in attempting to apply. Sustainable change is measured in progress over perfection. By breaking down the specification into achievable goals based on clear guidelines or even success criteria, you can more easily make progress toward long-term sustainability targets. Guideline examples and resources may also provide implementation guidance, while diverse benefits can help justify the effort and commitment to management.
This document has been reviewed by Interest Group members and interested parties. This is a draft document which may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than a work in progress. The Interest Group's role in publishing is to draw attention to the specification and to promote its widespread deployment.
By publishing these guidelines, the Interest Group does not expect that the work produced in this specification will affect the work undertaken by other W3C sustainability, accessibility, or performance groups. The Interest Group will continue to track these Working, Interest, and Community Groups as appropriate.
To provide feedback regarding this specification, the preferred method is using GitHub. It is free to create a GitHub account to file issues. A list of issues filed as well as archives of previous mailing list public-sustainableweb@w3.org (archive) discussions are publicly available. There is currently no preliminary interoperability or implementation report, however one of the key tasks of this Interest Group is to examine the potential for better models for digital sustainability that can feed into tooling (and thus into large studies of implementations) that can be reported upon and fed back into guidance for the Web Sustainability Guidelines.
Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) define how to make web products and services more sustainable for people and the planet. Web sustainability addresses more than just environmental issues [[VARIABLES]]; intersectional issues such as accessibility, privacy, and security can impact the sustainability of a project. We have an overview of web sustainability if you would like to learn more about the subject. The Interest Group considers that WSG incrementally advances web sustainability in numerous areas, but underscores that not all environmental improvements are met by these guidelines, as sustainability is an emerging field and research gaps may exist in certain areas. These guidelines may make digital products and services more performant, usable, and improve other metrics for end-users as a by-product of being sustainable. WSG may also be helpful to comply with existing and upcoming worldwide regulatory frameworks, reporting schemes, and compliance requirements (laws and policies).
Web Sustainability Guidelines (WSG) were developed in cooperation with individuals and organizations around the world. It does so, intending to provide a shared strategy for web sustainability that meets the needs of individuals, organizations, and governments internationally. WSG is designed to apply broadly to different existing web technologies now and in the future and to be testable with a combination of automated testing and human evaluation. While content within WSG has been categorized for ease of readability, considering sustainability impacts beyond a field of interest is critical to increase awareness and collective action.
Web sustainability depends not only on sustainable products and services but also on sustainable web browsers and other user agents. Examples include the performance of rendering and the accurate measuring of energy use through developer tooling. Authoring tools also have an important role in web sustainability, by ensuring performant code, reducing waste, and serving the results in the most sustainable way possible.
Coverage should not be restricted to what falls within the digital sector. While for this specification, we primarily focus on Internet-related technologies and the people and businesses that use them, sustainability concerns exist beyond the scope of this work, and as such, the impacts of these differing areas of concern should be addressed when meeting targets, reporting, and complying with relevant legislation.
The WSG was originally developed under the guidance of the Sustainable Web Design Community Group. W3C community groups act as incubator hubs where ideas for new technologies and standards can be discussed without formal constraints.
From April 2022, with the help of over 100 subject matter experts from around the globe, the group created the first draft, and subsequently, through GitHub and regular meetings continued work over another year to progress the WSG and its deliverables to a level of maturity where the group and its work were ready to become a part of the W3C family in October 2024.
The individuals and organizations that use WSG vary widely. To meet the varying needs of this audience, several layers of guidance are provided, including overarching principles, guidelines, success criteria, and additional information.
All of these layers of guidance (principles, guidelines, success criteria, and additional information) work together to guide how to make content more sustainable. Implementers are encouraged to view and apply all layers that they are able to, to make their project as sustainable as it can become.
While great care has been taken to make these guidelines as well-rounded and feature-complete as possible, there will likely be additional tasks implementers can perform to improve sustainability that this specification has failed to address.
This specification offers interactivity. You can filter and see only the success criteria that apply to your interests/choices by viewing the Full Document mode of the WSG and clicking the interactive "Filter the available WSG success criteria upon certain settings" link at the top of the content. Your choices will reveal themselves upon selecting from the categories and checkboxes.
The Web Sustainability Guidelines take the role of data and measurement seriously. All success criteria are evidence and best-practice backed, where possible through materials available in the resources document.
Alongside supporting evidence, the Interest Group will offer a JSON API that integrates live sustainability impact scores within this specification. Methods of calculating impact alongside details of the scope of measurability, limitations, and labels used to showcase scores will be available once the Task Force concludes their work. Available scores will be visible alongside success criteria and be updated by the Interest Group as appropriate.
WSG provides a crude reporting metric for reporting and compliance purposes based on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). An open source Jupyter Notebook was created. As an input, it takes a spreadsheet containing all the guidelines and (using low, medium, or high) their indicators of impact on the reduction of server resource usage, network transfer, and end-user device usage. Then it takes data from a GreenIT Report [[FOOTPRINT]] which estimates the environmental impact of the mentioned categories across material use, water use, energy use, and GHG emissions. It then combines these datasets and estimates the comparative impact of a given recommendation on different sections of GRI taxonomy.
When the JSON API with more accurate scores weighted against the GRI is published, the existing impact, effort, and reporting metrics will be deprecated and replaced. Until then, existing content may remain in the additional information.
This section lists requirements for conformance to WSG. It also provides information about how to make optional conformance claims. Finally, it describes greenwashing and cautionary notes when claiming conformance to WSG.
WSG is robustly built so that it can be implemented over time, in a non-specific order, and each success criteria will provide some measurable sustainability benefit. As such, conformance is measured upon the implementation of each guideline (and all of its success criteria being met) across the whole project.
To declare conformance to an individual guideline, all of the success criteria of that guideline must be met. In cases where success criteria do not apply to a situation or cannot be applied, partial conformance should still be declared, but declaring of passing individual success criteria may be more suitable to showcase conformity.
Total conformance is achieved by meeting every success criteria for every guideline within the specification. As a general policy, most products and services will not likely be able to satisfy all success criteria. This could be as a result of time commitments, or because certain guidelines and success criteria simply do not apply to your project. In these situations, it is not recommended that implementers prioritize conformance over other important features such as security updates. Pragmatism and progress over perfection should be considered paramount when implementing and conforming to these guidelines.
Conformance claims are not required. Implementers can conform to WSG without making a claim. If a conformance claim is made, then the conformance claim must include the following information:
Recording conformance claims within a sustainability statement may be helpful as a method of proving that you are meeting sustainability reduction targets, such as for internal scope accounting or meeting regulatory requirements.
In the field of sustainability, greenwashing (misappropriation or deliberately misinterpreting our work to appear greener than you are) is a very real threat. Within other fields of the tech industry, such as web accessibility, false claims can lead to harm to users. In sustainability, harm can occur not only to users of a product or service but also to the wider ecosystem.
As such, with claims of conformance, we advise consumers and implementers to do the following:
The body of work and landscape WSG builds on is constantly evolving. Some, typically referred to as "living" or "evergreen" standards, are subject to change frequently, and their impact on this publication's validity may be immediate. Others are updated less regularly, and the changes may not affect WSG publications until a new revision is issued.
In all cases, it is therefore prudent that implementors should regularly ensure that best practices have not changed due to new research or data and that any tooling they are using is frequently updated to account for compliance changes occurring as a result of more weighty evidence and guidance.
The WSG document is designed to meet the needs of those who need a stable, referenceable technical specification. Other documents, called supporting documents, are based on this document and address other important purposes, including techniques regarding implementation strategies, guiding implementors through the guidelines that apply to their use case, and how WSG would be applied to new technologies. Supporting documents include:
See the Interest Groups GitHub repository for further supporting materials, including education resources relating to WSG. Additional resources covering topics such as tooling may also be noted on a case-by-case basis.
If you are creating content and systems designed for users, then whether you know it or not, you are working in user experience (UX).
Good user experience reduces time and resources wasted on the journey. Poor user experience does the opposite, often also harming accessibility. Meanwhile, visual design choices and how we present information can have some of the biggest impacts on asset size, performance, and overall web sustainability.
Goals include:
Benefits include:
Identify, track, and publicly disclose negative external factors.
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify existing or potential negative external factors affecting a project. Disclose these in a publicly available resource, identifying areas where digital sustainability can be improved. Perform this audit at the start of your project and at regular intervals.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, Hardware, Ideation, Networking, Performance, Reporting, Research, Social Equity, Software
Understand the audience and their requirements, remove their constraints and barriers, and give them an equal role in decision making.
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify primary and secondary target users. Evaluate and define their needs through quantitative and/or qualitative research, testing, or analytics. Ensure your users and affected communities are consistently and closely involved in the research and testing process.
Machine-testable and Resources
Account for potential user constraints, such as the device age, operating system choice or version, browser, Virtual Private Network VPN use, and connection speeds when designing and assessing the quality of user experiences.
Machine-testable and Resources
Conduct internal and user research to identify whether a technical, material, or human constraint might require adaptations to reduce barriers or improve access to content.
Human-testable and Resources
Remove identified barriers to access. These can include deceptive design patterns, accessibility issues, or other pain points.
Human-testable and Resources
Assign all involved parties, including users, an equitable role in the decision-making process when undertaking research, identifying needs, or iterative design work.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, Ideation, Patterns, Reporting, KPIs, Research, Social Equity, UI, Usability
Account for non-users who may be indirectly affected by the environmental impact of the project.
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish a plan of action for non-users and other affected parties who might be indirectly impacted by choices made in e-commerce, this can include neighbors accepting parcels or traffic jams due to deliveries. Other examples include the local health impacts of infrastructure emissions, or supply chain pressure. Research non-user needs, understand how they might be affected, and consider ways negative effects could be mitigated.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
E-Waste, Hardware, Ideation, KPIs, Marketing, Reporting, Research, Social Equity, Usability
Optimize materials created at every stage of the process and involve users in the creation process.
Human-testable and Resources
Optimize all branding materials and assets approved during the ideation process in line with sustainability best practices prior to deployment. This also applies to brand refreshes, rebranding, and later enhancements. Make publicly available branding guidelines detailing the sustainability impact and best-practice deployment of materials and assets.
Human-testable and Resources
Use wireframes and rapid prototyping to quickly build consensus, reduce risk, and reduce the number of resources needed to build features. Evaluate the impact of all tools used.
Human-testable and Resources
Use the participatory design approach to involve users within the iteration and design process. When conducting user testing, reach out to your community to help improve your product. Provide opportunities for users to apply their knowledge and experience to your product or service.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Ideation, Research, Social Equity, Software, Strategy, UI
Consider the needs of and impact on users, the planet, and other affected parties.
Human-testable and Resources
Use a human-centered approach during ideation to consider the needs, interests, and impact on directly and indirectly affected parties.
Human-testable and Resources
Consider planetary needs and the environmental boundaries during the ideation phase. This can include creating non-user, non-human (animal, planet) personas, or climate-specific user stories and sprints.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Ideation, KPIs, Research, Social Equity, Strategy
Use distraction and clutter-free design, showing the visitor only what they need without interruptions or wasted resource consumption.
Machine-testable and Resources
Make access as simple and efficient as possible. Displaying the time required to complete an action, reduction of choice, and ensuring users understand requirements at the start of a journey can improve user efficiency.
Human-testable and Resources
Ensure user journeys are as smooth as possible. It also helps to build on established design patterns that people already understand.
Machine-testable and Resources
Enable users to complete tasks without distractions or non-essential features getting in the way.
Machine-testable and Resources
Only show users information that is relevant to their experience, hiding non-essential information from view.
Machine-testable and Resources
Ensure that disruptive actionable information, such as pop-up or modal windows, can only be initiated by the user.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Patterns, Performance, Social Equity, UI, Usability
Use decorative design only when it will enhance experiences rather than distracting or detracting from an interface.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use decorative design only when it enhances user experience. Remove unnecessary assets or those that do not enhance user experience or sustainability. Alternatively, make these optional and disabled by default.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Performance, UI, Usability
Provide good information architecture that signposts visitors to what they need, both human and machine, so they can reach their destination as efficiently as possible.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide an accessible, easy-to-use navigation menu with search features to help users easily find what they need.
Machine-testable and Resources
Consider implementing an efficient and regularly updated sitemap for human users. While guidance beyond the navigation bar may be unnecessary for smaller projects, clearly structured human-readable sitemaps can improve accessibility and help users find their way through websites or other online content with naturally complex or legacy information architecture.
Machine-testable and Resources
Implement lightweight and efficient means for users to learn about new content and services.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, HTML, Marketing, UI, Usability
Provide engagement that keeps the visitor's focus where it needs to be, avoiding anything that will either reduce efficiency or artificially prolong engagement.
Machine-testable and Resources
Ensure users can easily control how and when they receive information, with respect for their attention, focus, and mental energy.
Machine-testable and Resources
Prioritize features that assist rather than distract users, not unnecessarily prolonging the time they spend engaging with your content.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid using design strategies intended to artificially prolong user attention, such as infinite scroll.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Patterns, UI, Usability
Use established and recognizable patterns to increase the efficiency of the user journey.
Machine-testable and Resources
Display only essential components at the time they are needed. Where appropriate, use familiar patterns to maximize ease of use.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, CSS, Patterns, UI, Usability
Avoid using patterns, content, tools, or techniques that may artificially manipulate or deceive the visitor and waste energy.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid deceptive design or unethical coding techniques that manipulate users into taking actions that are not in their best interest. Examples include anti-right click, copy prevention, requiring an account to purchase, etc.
Human-testable and Resources
Select, present, and label advertisements and sponsorships transparently and only implement where these provide economic and ethical value without diminishing user experience.
Machine-testable and Resources
Evaluate and remove unnecessary or unused analytics and tracking, including any operating without user consent.
Machine-testable and Resources
Focus on serving user intent through non-manipulative search and social media optimization. For example, do not misuse coding practices intended to support assistive technologies. This can include content with natural redundancy, or unhelpful or low-quality material designed only to manipulate search results.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Assets, Compatibility, JavaScript, JavaScript, Patterns, Privacy, Security, Social Equity, UI, Usability
Create well documented deliverables so that future users can find and make use of them without requiring assistance or expending unnecessary time and resources.
Machine-testable and Resources
Create deliverables, including documentation, in ways that facilitate later reuse.
Machine-testable and Resources
Document functionality and technical specifications so that they can be understood by everyone that needs to use them.
Machine-testable and Resources
Developers have access to code comments and have the ability to view source to make it easier to access, understand, maintain, and use code.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Content, Education, Patterns, Software
Keep the components of the project as consistent and clear as possible by using a design system to organize reusable features.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use a design system based on web standards and established patterns to share interface components and ensure a consistent user experience.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Education, Patterns, Strategy, UI, Usability
Provide content that meets the needs of the audience, ensuring it is formatted for readability and incorporating SEO for visibility.
Machine-testable and Resources
Write content using plain and inclusive language, at an appropriate reading level for your audience. Account for specific needs in relation to accessibility, native language, and internationalization.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use appropriate formatting for digital media. Provide a clear document structure with consideration of visual hierarchy. Use headings, bulleted lists, line spacing, and highlights appropriately. Provide information with appropriate formatting for the action users need to take.
Machine-testable and Resources
Prioritize SEO from the early design stages and throughout the lifecycle to ensure content can be found and used.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Content, Social Equity, UI, Usability
Ensure images, if required, are optimized, correctly formatted, and sized, with lazy loading as appropriate, and are managed effectively.
Machine-testable and Resources
Do not include images unless they provide positive value. Consider the quantity, format, and sizes required.
Machine-testable and Resources
Resize, optimize, and compress each image. Provide images in appropriate sizes for different screen resolutions.
Machine-testable and Resources
Include lazy loading to ensure images only load when they are required.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide the option for images to be disabled or provide a low-fidelity alternative.
Machine-testable and Resources
Set up a media management and use policy to reduce the overall impact of images. Include criteria for media compression and file formats.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<picture> <source type="image/avif" srcset="image.avif"> <source type="image/webp" srcset="image.webp"> <img width="100px" height="100px" src="image.jpg" alt="" loading="lazy"/> </picture>
Tags
Assets, Content, HTML, Performance, Software, UI, Usability
Ensure media, if required, are optimized, correctly formatted, and sized, with deferred loading as appropriate, and are managed effectively.
Machine-testable and Resources
Do not include any video or audio unless it provides positive value. Disable auto-play functionality on audio and video.
Machine-testable and Resources
Optimize and compress media appropriately. Provide media in compatible and appropriate formats. Avoid non-native embedded media players.
Machine-testable and Resources
Load data-intensive media on the client side, including the media itself, behind a facade - a non-functional and static representational element.
Machine-testable and Resources
Let the user control media, including a choice of resolutions and formats and the option to deactivate media. Inform users the length, format, and data intensity of the media.
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish media management and use policy to evaluate and reduce the overall impact of media, such as audio, video, or emerging media formats. Include criteria for media compression and file formats.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Content, HTML, Performance, Software, UI, Usability
Ensure any animation deemed necessary is not overdone and that the user can control its ability to run.
Human-testable and Resources
Use animation only when it adds value and not for decorative elements.
Machine-testable and Resources
Progressively display an appropriate number of animations to avoid overburdening the user or negatively impacting device performance. This includes setting a maximum number of replays or iterations.
Machine-testable and Resources
Allow users to start, stop, pause, or otherwise control animated content.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
@media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
body *,
body *::before,
body *::after {
animation-delay: -1ms !important;
animation-duration: 1ms !important;
animation-iteration-count: 1 !important;
background-attachment: initial !important;
transition-duration: 1ms !important;
transition-delay: -1ms !important;
scroll-behavior: auto !important;
}
}
Tags
Accessibility, CSS, JavaScript, Performance, UI, Usability
Provide custom fonts in a highly optimized and correct format, but with a preference for pre-installed typefaces where possible.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use pre-installed, web-safe typefaces wherever possible.
Machine-testable and Resources
Limit the number of fonts used. Design or subset fonts to omit unnecessary or unused variations, such as font weight or characters. Use the most performant file format available.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, avenir next, avenir, segoe ui, helvetica neue, helvetica, Cantarell, Ubuntu, roboto, noto, arial, sans-serif;
Tags
CSS, Performance, UI, Usability
Integrate fallbacks so that if something cannot load or is not compatible, there is an accessible alternative to ensure equal access to the content.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide open alternatives, such as HTML, to proprietary file formats, such as PDF.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide a suitable font stack as a fallback when custom typefaces are used.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide meaningful alternative text for all descriptive images that are non-decorative and support the user's understanding of the content.
Machine-testable and Resources
Include transcripts and/or text versions of media files as an alternative to playing the media.
Machine-testable and Resources
Include WebVTT closed captions and subtitles support for videos. Provide localization as expected by your audience, including subtitles and sign language that meet the same standard.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
WEBVTT 00:01.000 --> 00:04.000 - Something happened yesterday morning. 00:05.000 --> 00:09.000 - Or was it in the evening? - I can't remember!
Tags
Accessibility, Assets, Compatibility, Content, HTML, Performance, Social Equity, UI, Usability
Ensure forms are as minimalistic and friction-free as possible, reducing the impact of submitting data.
Machine-testable and Resources
Remove unnecessary forms and reduce form content to the minimum necessary to meet the user needs while satisfying the organization's minimum requirements. Clearly communicate why a form is necessary, the value it provides, the number of steps required for completion, and what will be done with the collected data. Also disclose if the data will be shared with third parties.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid using auto-completion or auto-suggest based on partial entry to conserve user bandwidth and reduce unnecessary server side requests. Support the use of helpful tooling, such as password managers, by not preventing autofill.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, HTML, Privacy, Social Equity, UI, Usability
Ensure visitors who access your content using non-visual methods have an equal experience.
Machine-testable and Resources
Support non-visual browsing methods and various non-graphical ways to interact with content. This includes anything from assistive technologies to voice agents. Consider and provide working alternatives to visual interfaces.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
code {
background-color: #292a2b;
color: #e6e6e6;
font-family: monospace;
speak: literal-punctuation; /* Reads all punctuation out loud in iOS VoiceOver */
}
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, Content, HTML, Performance, Social Equity, Software, UI, Usability
Ensure any required notifications or alerts are clearly explained before activation, and that the user can both control and change them.
Human-testable and Resources
Remove non-essential notifications. Justify and reduce email, text message (SMS), and other invasive or energy-intense notifications to what is strictly necessary. Useful notifications, such as alerts for new content should be used with care and restraint, having both the users understanding and informed consent.
Human-testable and Resources
Let the user adjust their own notification and messaging settings. Ensure the options to unsubscribe, log out, and close an account should be available and visible. Ensure it is possible for the user to change their contact details.
Machine-testable and Resources
Clearly explain the result of a potential input through helpful prompts and messages that explain errors, next steps, and other relevant information. This will help to manage user's expectations.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<form> <label for="choose">Would you prefer a banana or cherry? (required)</label> <input id="choose" name="i-like" required /> <button>Submit</button> </form>
Tags
JavaScript, Privacy, UI, Usability
Reduce the need for physical documents as much as possible by allowing the saving of well-labeled, optimized digital downloads and having a print style sheet.
Machine-testable and Resources
Design your process to reduce the need for paper documents. Where the production of paper documents is essential, it should be designed to have the lowest impact possible. Include a CSS print style sheet and test it with different types of content. Encourage saving documents in digital formats over paper-based storage and archiving.
Machine-testable and Resources
Optimize and compress all downloadable documents. Make them available in a variety of accessible file formats.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid duplicating effort. If a document will be reused, generate and save it once on the server side for reuse, ideally on a cookie-free domain.
Machine-testable and Resources
Display the document name, a summary, the file size, and the format prior to downloading. Allow users to choose the right format and language for their needs where possible. Avoid embedding documents directly; provide a link to download or view them within the browser instead.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Compatibility, Content, E-Waste, Hardware, Performance, Software, UI, Usability
Document how you test new features with real users and validate the results, ensuring resources and training are provided to maintain the project's viability.
Machine-testable and Resources
Outline processes used to prototype and test new features, product ideas, and user interface components. Test with real users who represent different perspectives and user constraints.
Human-testable and Resources
Ensure prototyping and testing processes are sufficiently resourced to support long-term viability and avoid project abandonment.
Human-testable and Resources
Produce or provide, training materials to properly educate and onboard new contributors.
Human-testable and Resources
Conduct regular and extensive testing alongside user interviews to validate whether released features meet internal goals and audience needs.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Education, Governance, Ideation, Research, Social Equity, Strategy, UI, Usability
Regularly audit for issues or problems, running tests at regular intervals to ensure stability of the project.
Machine-testable and Resources
Check the codebase for bugs, identify performance issues, and account for accessibility or security problems at appropriate regular intervals, such as every month or quarter.
Machine-testable and Resources
Implement non-regression tests for all critical features.
Machine-testable and Resources
Incorporate regression testing into each release cycle to ensure new features do not introduce bugs or otherwise conflict with existing functionality.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, KPIs, Performance, Privacy, Reporting, Research, Security, Social Equity, Strategy, UI, Usability
Check for performance issues in both simulated and real-world scenarios while also accounting for compliance issues.
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify and resolve bottlenecks or issues in the underlying code or infrastructure which could impact sustainability and performance. Consider both simulated and real-world metrics. Monitor performance across every release cycle using appropriate tooling or through research and auditing.
Machine-testable and Resources
Collect only data required to provide a streamlined and effective user journey and comply with relevant accessibility and data protection legislation. Put policies in place to ensure strict adherence.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<link rel="prefetch" href="/articles/" as="document">
Tags
Accessibility, KPIs, Networking, Performance, Privacy, Research, Strategy, Usability
Factor the ways people use the project into your decision making and consider how this can be optimized for both people and the planet.
Human-testable and Resources
Monitor user feedback, adoption, and churn rates in relation to different features and incorporate these insights into future releases.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
KPIs, Research, Strategy, Usability
Run usability tests to determine if the impact of the project can be further iterated to reduce friction points.
Human-testable and Resources
Incorporate usability testing into product cycles and routinely measure the impact of these tests for future releases.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, KPIs, Research, Social Equity, Strategy, UI, Usability
Produce a regularly updated compatibility policy that details support levels, scenarios tested against, and technology used to benefit users.
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish and maintain a compatibility policy which covers current and obsolete devices and software versions, listing the supported device brands, operating systems, and browsers (including versions). Update this regularly in line with new releases.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid planned obsolescence. Strive to maintain compatibility for as long as possible and communicate clearly whether an update is evolutionary, as in large updates that can significantly reduce performance, or corrective, as in smaller updates that fix bugs or improve security.
Machine-testable and Resources
Test performance in various scenarios to ensure compatibility. Testing should cover weak, unstable, restricted, or slow connections, old browsers, and devices older than five years.
Human-testable and Resources
Use device-adaptable methods such as responsive design and prototype interfaces to support progressive enhancement and content prioritization.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use a PWA over a native mobile application if it meets sustainability, interoperability, and compatibility criteria.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, KPIs, Research, Security, Social Equity, Software, Strategy, UI, Usability
Sustainable web design and development practices at the front-end and back-end often intersect with best practices, unlocking numerous benefits for people and the planet alike.
Front-end and back-end web development play a big role in creating a sustainable web. The result is code that runs more efficiently and transparently. Products are better able to meet user and user objectives, fast, while reducing the burden on hardware resources. Sustainable web development offers scaling and wide-reaching advantages.
Goals include:
Benefits include:
Account for the difference in energy intensity that different types of content may have on a project and set goals based on what you would like to achieve.
Machine-testable and Resources
Set clear goals with performance and environmental impact in mind, then meet them. These could include, the number of requests or elements that must be rendered.
Machine-testable and Resources
Consider differences in the energy intensity or testable impact across each component. For example, unstyled text is less computationally intensive to render than CSS, which in turn is less process-heavy than JavaScript, which is less resource-heavy than WebGL or 4K video.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
KPIs, Networking, Performance, Research, Social Equity, Strategy
Remove redundant characters from code to reduce the amount of data being stored and transferred to devices.
Machine-testable and Resources
Remove unnecessary white space, comments, and other non-essential characters from code and data files to reduce file sizes and improve loading times. This applies to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, SVG, and other relevant file types.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
!function(e,t){"use strict";"object"==typeof module&&"object"==typeof module.exports?module.exports=e.document?t(e,!0):function(e){if(!e.document)throw new Error("jQuery requires a window with a document");return t(e)}:t(e)}("undefined"!=typeof window?window:this,function(g,e){"use strict";var t=[],r=Object.getPrototypeOf,s=t.slice,v=t.flat?function(e){return t.flat.call(e)}:function(e){return t.concat.apply([],e)},u=t.push,i=t.indexOf
Tags
CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Performance
Break down large components into smaller, self-contained pieces that can be requested only when required to save bandwidth.
Machine-testable and Resources
Break down bandwidth-heavy components into smaller, modular segments that can be loaded only when required. This applies to both front-end and back-end code.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
link.addEventListener("click", (e) => {
e.preventDefault();
import("/modules/my-module.js")
.then((module) => {
/* Do something */
})
.catch((err) => {
console.error(err.message);
});
});
Tags
CSS, JavaScript, Performance
Clear out dead or unused code as it builds up in a project to reduce the amount of wasted data being transferred.
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify and eliminate unused and dead code, commonly within CSS and JavaScript.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
export function read(props) { return props.book }
import { read } from 'utilities';
eventHandler = (e) => { read({ book: e.target.value })}
Tags
CSS, JavaScript, Performance
Improve solutions rather than recreating them, using good organization strategies to simplify code where possible and reduce redundancy.
Human-testable and Resources
Remove duplication and/or simplify and optimize your code for better performance, focusing on essential features so you have a cleaner, less redundant product and codebase.
Human-testable and Resources
Improve existing solutions rather than redeveloping and redesigning products from scratch, since the latter would duplicate the coding effort and maintenance burden for developers rather than reduce the learning burden for users.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use organization methodology and systems such as Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) or Write Everything Twice (WET) to optimize the arrangement and output of your JavaScript and CSS.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
.opinions_box {
margin: 0 0 8px 0;
text-align: center;
&__view-more {
text-decoration: underline;
}
&__text-input {
border: 1px solid #ccc;
}
&--is-inactive {
color: gray;
}
}
Tags
CSS, JavaScript, Patterns, Performance
Avoid using large third-party libraries and frameworks where possible, and where these must be used, self host, defer loading, allow the user to object, and provide alternatives.
Machine-testable and Resources
Assess third-party content and/or services (including plugins, widgets, feeds, maps, carousels, tracking scripts, and more) as early as possible in the ideation or creation process. Use as few as possible, preferring lighter, less complex solutions to reduce the overall environmental impact, including Scope 3 emissions.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use click-to-load triggers based on an import on interaction pattern to prevent automatic loading of third-party content and/or services (see above). Offer suitable alternatives to third-party use, for example, a link to a contact form as an alternative to a chat widget.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid using large libraries and frameworks. Integrate these only when unable to use a more performant alternative to achieve the same goal.
Machine-testable and Resources
Prioritize self-hosted content over embedding content from third-party services.
Machine-testable and Resources
Host icons and widgets on your own server, rather than relying on third-party services to host and deliver these or embed third-party functionality within your project.
Machine-testable and Resources
Respect user preferences around the use of third-party products and services, similar to the implementation of cookie consent modals. Provide mechanisms to disable or refuse non-first-party features alongside explanations of their purpose unless it is possible to show these third-party features are critical for functionality.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<iframe src="https://example.com" loading="lazy" width="600" height="400"></iframe>
Tags
JavaScript, Performance, Privacy, Security, Software, UI, Usability
Use semantic markup free of optional or non-standard code, only using custom solutions when native ones are insufficient.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use accurate markup according to the relevant standard(s).
Machine-testable and Resources
Remove optional HTML elements, attribute quotes, and default attributes only when they do not negatively impact functionality, accessibility, or readability. Retain them when they enhance accessibility, maintain clarity without compromising on performance, or ensure consistent browser rendering.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid using non-standard HTML elements or attributes.
Human-testable and Resources
Prioritize the use of standard HTML elements and attributes. Only use custom elements or Web Components if you cannot use native elements or if you require them for the purposes of producing reusable design system components.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<header></header> <section> <article> <figure> <img> <figcaption></figcaption> </figure> </article> </section> <footer></footer>
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, Content, HTML, Social Equity, Usability
Avoid render-blocking slowdowns by asynchronously loading, deferring, or prioritizing external resources as appropriate.
Machine-testable and Resources
Defer loading of non-essential external assets or set these to load asynchronously to avoid a Flash Of Unstyled Content (FOUC).
Machine-testable and Resources
Where external resources are required to be used upon the documents load, optimize loading using resource and priority hints.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<img src="image.png" loading="lazy" alt="…" width="200" height="200">
Tags
Assets, CSS, JavaScript, Performance
Ensure that search engines, as well as accessibility tooling, can access a project to reduce wasted journeys.
Machine-testable and Resources
Optimize and only include suitable metadata and microdata.
Machine-testable and Resources
Permit appropriate access to search engines while blocking unsustainable robots and scripts.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide accessibility and usability aids, such as skip links and signposts, to help users find and navigate content.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"> <url> <loc>https://www.example.com/foo.html</loc> <lastmod>2022-06-04</lastmod> </url> </urlset>
Tags
Accessibility, HTML, Marketing, UI, Usability
Label forms correctly while also checking for errors both prior to and during submission to reduce the impact of erroneous data entry.
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify errors through live validation and with feedback on submission.
Machine-testable and Resources
Clearly label and identify required elements to ensure easy recognition for users using assistive technologies.
Machine-testable and Resources
Always allow the copying and pasting of content (including passwords) from external sources.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<label for="username">Username: (3-16 characters)</label>
<input name="username" type="text" value="Sasha" pattern="\w{3,16}" required>
<label for="pin">PIN: (4 digits)</label>
<input name="pin" type="password" pattern="\d{4,4}" required>
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, HTML, Security, UI, Usability
Include the required metadata and structured microdata to increase the visibility and findability of resources.
Machine-testable and Resources
Include the required title element, plus any beneficial optional HTML head elements.
Machine-testable and Resources
Include necessary meta tag references that are commonly recognized and used by user agents such as search engines. Follow recognized standards and vocabularies such as Friend of a Friend (FOAF) or RDFa.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use microdata, structured data (e.g., Schema.org), or microformats in content where a widely used structured data format exists.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<html>
<head>
<title>Example: A website about Examples</title>
<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context" : "https://schema.org",
"@type" : "WebSite",
"name" : "Example",
"url" : "https://example.com/"
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
Tags
Accessibility, HTML, Marketing, Usability
Use sustainable media queries, such as dark mode and scripting media queries, to customize an interface to suit user preferences and reduce emissions.
Machine-testable and Resources
Accommodate common user preferences, such as prefers-color-scheme, with corresponding CSS media queries. Consider accounting for additional user preferences, including monochrome, prefers-contrast, prefers-reduced-data, prefers-reduced-transparency, and prefers-reduced-motion preference queries where these will benefit your users. Use print and scripting media queries when they can improve sustainability.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
/* wants dark mode */
}
@media (prefers-color-scheme: light) {
/* wants light mode */
}
Tags
Accessibility, Assets, CSS, UI, Usability
Use a mix of carbon-aware design techniques to adapt to different layouts, different modes of interaction, and also progressively enhance content.
Machine-testable and Resources
Allow your project to work and adapt seamlessly across a variety of devices and screen sizes, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktop computers, smart TVs, and other emerging platforms. This ensures that content and functionality can be easily accessed and are suitably optimized for display on both smaller mobile devices and larger displays without limiting accessibility, usability, or design features on any specific device type. Implement robust fallback strategies to ensure that the digital product or service will not fail if it encounters unsupported technologies.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use progressive enhancement to enhance overall sustainability. This can involve a single approach or a careful combination, such as adaptive design, mobile-first design, or dynamic serving.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use carbon-aware design techniques to maximize your use of carbon-free energy. This is achieved by adapting the delivery of your project to current electricity availability and user grid load. This should include using situational design to reduce the codebase and disable non-essential functionality during high-intensity periods. Similarly, it should be possible to adapt the user interface to perform better with reduced hardware resources, where this measure can be taken to avoid scaling hardware resources and the resultant increase in emissions. It can also include designing algorithms that can automatically disable features based on set thresholds.
Machine-testable and Resources
Support additional indirect methods of interaction, such as voice (speech), code (QR, etc.), reader view (browser, application, or RSS), or connected technologies (watch, appliance, transport, etc.).
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
@media screen and (min-width: 600px) {
body {
color: red;
}
}
Tags
Compatibility, CSS, Performance, UI, Usability
Use JavaScript in an energy-efficient and accessible way, only using APIs and making external calls when this enhances a project's sustainability.
Machine-testable and Resources
Improve sustainability through accessible and performant code.
Machine-testable and Resources
Integrate energy-relevant APIs - such as Battery Status, Compression Streams, Page Visibility, or Vibration - where these can reduce energy consumption.
Human-testable and Resources
Call client- or server-side APIs only when necessary. Equally, ensure an API is optimized to only send data that is actually required.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
const audio = document.querySelector("audio");
// Handle page visibility change:
// - If the page is hidden, pause the video
// - If the page is shown, play the video
document.addEventListener("visibilitychange", () => {
if (document.hidden) {
audio.pause();
} else {
audio.play();
}
});
Tags
Accessibility, JavaScript, Security
Regularly check code for exploitable security issues that could affect both users and hosting infrastructure.
Machine-testable and Resources
Check scripts and associated code for vulnerabilities, exploits, header issues, and code injection.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
JavaScript, Privacy, Security, Social Equity
Use libraries and frameworks only where necessary, when vanilla code or smaller packages are inappropriate for the use case, and they are kept up to date.
Machine-testable and Resources
Prevent developers from downloading and installing libraries and frameworks to run client-side when they are not needed by checking for unused dependencies. Follow up by uninstalling those that are not needed.
Machine-testable and Resources
Limit your use of libraries and frameworks to the genuinely necessary as this will reduce the amount of code that has to be downloaded and parsed by the browser. Consider whether you can use vanilla code instead. Check the package size and whether individual modules can be installed and imported individually, as opposed to the entire library.
Machine-testable and Resources
Regularly check dependencies and keep them up to date.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
npm uninstall <package-name>
Tags
JavaScript, Patterns, Performance, Security, Software
Always provide expected files and optionally offer environmentally or otherwise beneficial files to enhance the project.
Machine-testable and Resources
Include favicon.ico, robots.txt, opensearch.xml, site.webmanifest, and sitemap.xml files by default. Also ensure that any similar files defined in future web standards or specifications are included.
Machine-testable and Resources
Include beneficial files such as ads.txt, carbon.txt, humans.txt, security.txt. Also ensure that any similar files defined in future web standards or specifications are included.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
User-agent: * Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Tags
Assets, Compatibility, Marketing, Patterns, Security, UI
Stick to the latest version of language specifications when coding unless you have a documented need to do otherwise.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid using deprecated, proprietary, or outdated formats and web standards. Always adopt up-to-date, widely recognized standards. Only use deprecated, proprietary, or outdated code where this is required to meet a documented customer need and if there is a justifiable benefit that cannot otherwise be met. Justifiable reasons could include compatibility with essential legacy systems and/or hardware, accessibility, or emissions reduction. Use polyfills only when necessary, and regularly audit code to see if they can be removed.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Compatibility, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Performance
Identify the project requirements, use the most efficient approach, aim for static over dynamic where possible, and consider the impact of extensions and components.
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify the requirements and use this as a basis to help you select the most appropriate implementation for your project. A simpler technological implementation may use more human resources but could have a smaller footprint. A prebuilt solution may use more system resources and have a bigger emissions impact on render, but it could have a faster build time - meaning less carbon is emitted in development.
Human-testable and Resources
Use the most effective approach for your use case. Most of the time, coding from scratch will often provide the most performant results. Where an existing solution is present and is being actively maintained, this may be better optimized than what you can reasonably produce yourself. Favor native components and file systems over WYSIWYG editors - including visual page builders - or other heavy frameworks. Be mindful of the impact of third-party solutions.
Human-testable and Resources
Deliver static in place of dynamic content wherever possible. If you choose to use a code generation tool, then favor the most efficient tool available, such as Static Site Generators (SSGs). Content delivered by a dynamic CMS will involve much more server-side processing and uses bulkier libraries.
Machine-testable and Resources
Carefully select and review plugins, extensions, and themes to maximize interoperability, accessibility, and performance. Audit these regularly over time to ensure continued compatibility.
Human-testable and Resources
Pay particular attention to user interface components with respect to their sustainability impact.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Compatibility, Ideation, Performance, Software, Strategy
Consider the environmental impact of the chosen syntax language, while always ensuring you use the latest build of any language or framework.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use the latest build of your chosen syntax language and its coupled framework.
Human-testable and Resources
Use the most appropriate programming language for the task. Many tools and programming languages are optimized for the performance of particular tasks. Applying the most appropriate tools to the problem can justify any time or effort involved in their adoption, especially if there is a reasonable user base, provided it does not impact the wellbeing of those involved or risk becoming cost-prohibitive.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Compatibility, Performance, Security
Use native features and functionality that exist within languages before constructing new ones that may not be as optimized.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use native functions, APIs, and features over writing your own.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<button onclick="window.dialog.showModal();">open dialog</button> <dialog id="dialog"> <p>I'm a dialog.</p> <form method="dialog"> <button>Close</button> </form> </dialog>
Tags
Compatibility, CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Patterns, UI
Optimize any information provided via databases, both in terms of access schedules and how queries are sent and received.
Human-testable and Resources
Optimize database queries, especially for frequently accessed information. If you need information that is stored in a database, and you require it or it is likely to be requested more than once in your code, the database should only be accessed once and the data stored locally for subsequent processing. Avoid relying on framework helpers that might defer filtering to later in the process.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
$value = get_post_meta( int $post_id, string $key = '', bool $single = false ): mixed
Tags
Networking, Performance
Even data has a home. Whether you are developing tools, processing data, maintaining online systems, operating websites or something else - conscious choices in this area can have an enormous impact.
Sustainable or green web hosting, infrastructure, and systems covers the energy our data centers use, but it ultimately goes much further: It is also about where and what data is processed or stored and the technologies used. Conscious provisioning choices and best practices can improve both sustainability and operational efficiency.
Goals include:
Benefits include:
Ensure hosting and domain service providers support monitoring of resource use, use carbon-free electricity, and maintain and recycle equipment properly.
Machine-testable and Resources
Monitor key indicators to assess and transparently report the environmental impact of hosting and identify overconsumption. These include energy and water usage, but also hardware factors, such as CPU usage and memory usage. Similarly, track the allocation of servers and CPU cores to optimize resource efficiency. Consumers should monitor and providers should both calculate and transparently share, environmental impact metrics. Metrics should include Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE), and Carbon Usage Effectiveness (CUE).
Human-testable and Resources
Maintain hardware to extend its lifespan as long as possible. Use it efficiently at an appropriate capacity, and ensuring it has the necessary certifications. New purchases should be from reliable long-lifespan suppliers.
Human-testable and Resources
Responsibly recycle or upcycle unwanted waste. Materials should be recovered and reused, where possible, or otherwise disposed of appropriately.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use electricity with the lowest possible carbon intensity. Examine location-based emissions factors to calculate the carbon intensity of available electricity from the regional grid. Include the impact of on-site electricity generation, including backup generators, in calculations.
Human-testable and Resources
Balance unavoidable remaining carbon emissions with high-quality market based instruments or other evolving instruments from the voluntary carbon market, until additional carbon-free energy resources become available. The quality of market-based instruments should be verified by non-profit third-party organizations with sufficient supporting evidence.
Machine-testable and Resources
The impact of domain names is disclosed by registries and registrars, and registrants consider and (where possible) mitigate against these environmental issues.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
E-Waste, Hardware, Networking, Social Equity
Use caching on all appropriate resources, prioritizing the ability to use the resource offline if possible.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use server-side caching where possible to reduce processing time and repeated database lookups or API calls. Configure caching via server settings to control file-type expiration using appropriate headers, such as Expires or Cache-Control. Cache dynamic page responses where possible to serve static versions to future users. Support client-side caching of frequently used static assets to minimize repeat server requests.
Machine-testable and Resources
Ensure resources remain available and accessible even if the user is disconnected, using methods such as JavaScript Service Workers, Web Workers, and browser local storage features.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<IfModule mod_expires.c> ExpiresActive on # Default: Fallback ExpiresDefault "access plus 1 year" # Specific: Assets ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 week" ExpiresByType application/rss+xml "access plus 1 hour" ExpiresByType application/json "access" </IfModule>
Tags
Assets, HTML, JavaScript, Networking, Performance, Software
Use compression on all appropriate resources either before or as part of the transfer process.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use server-side compression to reduce file sizes before delivery. Server-side compression settings and tools can be used to compress most commonly used file types, reducing energy consumption while minimizing load times, saving bandwidth, and improving overall performance.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use media compression tools to reduce the file size of images, videos, audio, and any other media before uploading to a server.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
<IfModule mod_deflate.c>
<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
SetEnvIfNoCase ^(Accept-EncodXng|X-cept-Encoding|X{15}|~{15}|-{15})$ ^((gzip|deflate)\s*,?\s*)+|[X~-]{4,13}$ HAVE_Accept-Encoding
RequestHeader append Accept-Encoding "gzip,deflate" env=HAVE_Accept-Encoding
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_filter.c>
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE "application/atom+xml application/javascript application/json application/ld+json application/manifest+json application/rdf+xml application/rss+xml application/schema+json application/geo+json application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/wasm application/x-font-ttf application/x-javascript application/x-web-app-manifest+json application/xhtml+xml application/xml font/eot font/opentype font/otf font/ttf image/bmp image/svg+xml image/vnd.microsoft.icon image/x-icon text/cache-manifest text/calendar text/css text/html text/javascript text/plain text/markdown text/vcard text/vnd.rim.location.xloc text/vtt text/x-component text/x-cross-domain-policy text/xml"
</IfModule>
<IfModule mod_mime.c>
AddEncoding gzip svgz
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
Tags
Assets, Networking, Performance
Use error and redirection handling on projects to reduce the impact of wasted journeys or unhelpful detours.
Machine-testable and Resources
Set up proper error handling and error pages to clearly inform users when something goes wrong, guide them back to useful content, and maintain a consistent, trustworthy experience.
Machine-testable and Resources
Regularly audit to check for broken and outdated links. Update these as necessary and add redirects to guide users and search engines to the correct content to ensure efficient browsing and protect SEO value. Test all redirects to ensure they function as intended and avoid impactful redirect loops. Favor the most efficient redirection system for your setup (e.g., server rules over database lookups).
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
Tags
Compatibility, Content, Marketing, Networking, UI, Usability
Reduce the number of unnecessary virtualized environments to save hardware utilization.
Human-testable and Resources
Minimize the number of active environments, including virtualized environments (such as containers). Audit codebases for unused branches and environments and remove them as appropriate.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Hardware, Networking, Performance, Software
Automate recurring tasks only where this saves resources, such as scaling services to reduce consumption or handling suspicious activity.
Human-testable and Resources
Automate recurring tasks, such as deployment, testing, and compilation in alignment with continuous integration and continuous delivery best practices.
Human-testable and Resources
Run automated tasks only when necessary to reduce unnecessary resource utilisation.
Human-testable and Resources
Use automated scaling to promptly adjust server capacity up or down based on demand, ensuring efficient resource allocation. Implement buffering and throttling to manage load and maintain performance without overprovisioning.
Machine-testable and Resources
Restrict the activity of unwanted and unnecessary third-party crawlers, suspicious user agents, unwanted users, bots, and scrapers from accessing or downloading your content. Follow best practices, such as server access rules and security tools, while ensuring your content remains accessible to users, search engines and any helpful, welcome crawlers. Consider that scrapers may be used to inform and train large language models.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Performance, Security, Software
Decide when to refresh data based on a balance of user and sustainability considerations.
Machine-testable and Resources
Define the revalidation and refresh frequency for the cache, local data, and page content based on user needs, balancing performance, data accuracy, and resource efficiency.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
JavaScript, Networking, Performance, Usability
Back up data at regular intervals to ensure that there are failsafes that can be relied upon should an issue occur.
Human-testable and Resources
Ensure backups of system and user data are secure and incremental to minimize storage use, reduce backup time, and protect against data loss or breaches.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Hardware, Performance
Account for the energy involved in data transfer, considering factors such as the protocol used, whether it is processed client- or server-side, and the environment used.
Human-testable and Resources
Use existing and supported carbon-aware computing methods to automate batching and scheduling according to real-time electrical grid carbon intensity data or shift workloads to lower-carbon regions to optimize sustainability while maintaining performance.
Machine-testable and Resources
Choose communication protocols appropriate to user needs and the type of data being transferred. Avoid insecure options such as HTTP and FTP, and prioritize secure, efficient alternatives such as HTTPS and SSH. Use modern protocols to take advantage of newer features, while maintaining backward compatibility for older devices.
Human-testable and Resources
Consider using event-driven architecture and microservices when building products with state changes that do not require full page refreshes. Favor these where they offer a more energy-efficient alternative to traditional APIs based on performance, power, and processing factors. Choose the approach that reduces server workload and environmental impact.
Human-testable and Resources
Avoid redundant processing. When data processing is necessary, carefully compare the relative effects of client- versus server-side processing based on efficiency, performance, security, and sustainability metrics to make an informed decision.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
JavaScript, Networking, Performance
Use CDNs where they bring a sustainability benefit, ensuring the provider itself is sustainable, has nodes local to an audience, and they are only used to serve static resources on them.
Machine-testable and Resources
Deploy static content, assets, and other read-only resources via a Content Delivery Network (CDN) on a case-by-case basis, where judged to be beneficial. Carefully evaluate the environmental impact of any CDN service used, similar to a web hosting provider.
Machine-testable and Resources
Select CDN providers that make commitments to sustainability and report on their progress.
Machine-testable and Resources
When serving an exclusively local audience, consider whether a CDN is required at all. Instead, select hosting providers with servers close to your target audience.
Machine-testable and Resources
Avoid deploying dynamic or frequently changing resources to a CDN. Browser behaviors such as cache partitioning and cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) can limit performance gains, hinder caching and interaction, and attempting to override these can introduce security or privacy risks. This does not apply to static assets or JSON files, which are well suited to CDN delivery.
Human-testable and Resources
Perform data transformations, transfers, and processing between the layers of an application as close to the source as possible. This reduces unnecessary serialization overhead and avoids wasting resources.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Hardware, Networking, Performance
Maintain the infrastructure you require rather than over-provisioning and autoscale to meet demand instead to preserve hardware resources.
Human-testable and Resources
Select infrastructure that meets your requirements and customer agreements without over-provisioning. Favor standalone instances over multi-zone or distributed setups when requirements allow. Provision for average loads rather than peaks to ensure efficient resource use. Use autoscaling to handle fluctuations without underutilizing infrastructure.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
E-Waste, Hardware, Performance
Set expiration dates on data so it can be archived, made available offline, or removed when no longer used or required, with the remaining content tagged for future management.
Human-testable and Resources
Regularly audit for and delete redundant, abandoned, or single-use data - often referred to as dark data - to reduce storage demand and energy use.
Machine-testable and Resources
Assign expiration and/or maximum retention dates to stored data where appropriate, treating excess data as a form of technical debt. Simultaneously observe any applicable minimum data retention periods. Make data cleanup an established organization-wide routine to prevent long-term data accumulation.
Machine-testable and Resources
Implement a data classification and tagging policy to improve visibility, simplify management, and enable efficient removal of outdated or unused data.
Human-testable and Resources
Store data only when it cannot be easily or accurately regenerated.
Machine-testable and Resources
Optimize log collection and storage by scheduling backups during low-activity hours, rotating logs appropriately, and using off-site, sustainable providers.
Human-testable and Resources
Make large, long-term assets available for easy download in order to provide users with regular offline access without requiring persistant server resources.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
Accept-Encoding: zstd, gzip, br, deflate
Tags
Content, E-Waste, Hardware, Performance, Privacy
Designing websites and applications for better sustainability requires good business strategy and product management.
Anyone who owns, manages, or operates a website or application has significant capacity to improve the sustainability footprint of their organization. Business owners and other C-level executives are likely to be the main people responsible for the most impactful strategic decisions an organization can make. But all individuals working online can also make a big difference. Work in this area can improve the sustainability of various non-technical considerations that stretch beyond, or affect, a digital product or service.
Goals include:
Benefits include:
Produce policies and documents showcasing evidence, achievements, and onboarding underpinned by good governance.
Machine-testable and Resources
Develop, publish and maintain key policies, such as a code of ethics, product guidelines, sustainability statements, and/or other documents that include language specific to digital products, services, policies, and programs. Make these publicly accessible and transparently versioned formats.
Machine-testable and Resources
Publish achievements, features, compliance, and anything beyond the scope of these guidelines within a dedicated sustainability section.
Human-testable and Resources
Provide evidence to demonstrate how digital sustainability policies, climate policies, and related practices are effectively implemented, monitored, and governed over time.
Human-testable and Resources
Provide training decks and workshops to support onboarding new team members in relation to sustainable product strategies.
Machine-testable and Resources
Document your methodology through impact storytelling, documentation, and creating resources to help individuals make more informed decisions and raise awareness among your users.
Machine-testable and Resources
Demonstrate how digital products and services are powered using carbon-free energy.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Education, Ideation, KPIs, Research, Social Equity, Strategy
Appoint a sustainability advocate who is provided with what they require to speak about and for issues relating to sustainability.
Machine-testable and Resources
Assign a sustainability advocate with specific digital expertise and provide them with the resources, budget, tools, and time they need to achieve their stated goals. In some organizations, expanding this into a climate working group comprising motivated individuals can add further benefits.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Education, Ideation, Marketing, Social Equity
Drive sustainability awareness both externally and internally with active encouragement and routine training offered where necessary.
Human-testable and Resources
Inform and deliver training to all affected parties, including product teams, colleagues, and organizational decision-makers - both managers and clients - in both general and digital climate literacy, as well as your own sustainable technology policies.
Human-testable and Resources
Provide active and routine training where possible to develop, establish, and refresh skills relating to sustainability. This can be delivered as in-house training, courses, workshops, events, webinars, meetups, or other ongoing or on-demand methods that support your team in achieving sustainability objectives.
Machine-testable and Resources
Encourage participants to reduce their environmental impact. Share climate and sustainable initiatives and ideas. Provide resources on sustainable design, best practices, and concepts to assist them.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Education, Marketing, Reporting
Empower visitors, allowing them to make decisions when their choices can influence the environmental impact they have.
Human-testable and Resources
Clearly communicate the environmental impact of different user choices and allow users to configure settings based on the information provided.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Education, Marketing, Reporting
Calculate the environmental impact of the project and any tooling you use, and even that of a competitor, where possible, as this may be useful for comparison.
Human-testable and Resources
Conduct a full life-cycle analysis based on the functional unit defined under guideline 5.15.
Machine-testable and Resources
Calculate the environmental impact of your or a competitor's current service to inform decision-making targets.
Human-testable and Resources
Include the impact or estimated impact of any tooling or third-party solutions used at any stage in your pipeline. While not created by you, the emissions generated in production, maintenance, and use are also integral to your overall solution.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Ideation, KPIs, Research, Social Equity, Software, Strategy
Publish a set of sustainability goals that can be used to track progress over a period of time.
Machine-testable and Resources
Define and publish a clear set of sustainability goals. Publicly communicate how these goals can be met, including which performance metrics can be measured to help the organization and its various affected parties act more sustainably.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Governance, Ideation, KPIs, Research, Social Equity
Obtain and maintain third-party certifications to externally validate progress toward sustainability goals.
Machine-testable and Resources
Obtain one or more sustainability certifications and incorporate operational policies and practices in alignment with their guidance.
Human-testable and Resources
Maintains sustainability certifications through continuing to meet their criteria and evolving policies and practices over time.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Governance, KPIs
Provide training materials and incentives to encourage participation from members of the organisation toward meeting sustainability goals.
Human-testable and Resources
Create and/or deliver dedicated training manuals, workshops, and materials to outline the sustainability policies and practices adopted and how to implement them. Manage and maintain these materials over time, adapting them as new policies and best practices arise.
Human-testable and Resources
Incentivize leadership, teams, and individuals to make progress toward the goals outlined in their training. Examples include dedicating time for sustainability-related activities, recognizing completion, and other benefits.
Human-testable and Resources
Anticipate and map potential negative external factors and act to minimize their overall impact.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Education, Strategy
Create policies and documents showing evidence of commitment towards impact progress, how this is achieved, and any applicable regulations you are meeting.
Machine-testable and Resources
Create and publish policies and practices to disclose the social and environmental impacts of its products, programs, and services in line with existing reporting standards such as GRI, SASB, etc.
Machine-testable and Resources
Produce a publicly available impact report outlining progress compared to previous reports on social and environmental goals at least once per year.
Machine-testable and Resources
Publicly and transparently demonstrate commitment over time to following and adopting existing and/or emerging environmental standards and legislative policy that promotes mandatory emissions disclosures and reporting.
Human-testable and Resources
Clearly identify how environmental impact is being reduced, with careful avoidance of double accounting, greenwashing, data exclusion, or other misleading or manipulative techniques.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, KPIs, Reporting
Produce a document that shows how the organisation is taking steps to become as resilient as possible.
Human-testable and Resources
Complete and operationalize a theory of change process with requisite documentation to identify the impact the organization aspires to achieve, how it will generate revenue, how it will create shared or added value from these activities, and how it will measure results based on desired outcomes. In the case of projects already underway, how these are generating revenue and actively tracking and measuring progress against desired outcomes.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Ideation, Research, Strategy
Explain through documentation how projects will be maintained, managed, resourced, and note issues while tracking measurements over time.
Machine-testable and Resources
Produce and maintain documentation to outline how the organization approaches product management and maintenance.
Human-testable and Resources
Establish maintenance and security plans for all digital products and services.
Human-testable and Resources
Appropriately resource products over time via staffing and budgeting to support code refactoring, address technical debt, introduce new product features, test functionality, and produce product or service maintenance plans to continue supporting customers, users, and other affected parties.
Human-testable and Resources
Incorporate carbon and resource measurement into maintenance programs and show measurable improvement over time.
Human-testable and Resources
Identify and document Key Failure Indicators (KFIs) and implement resolutions to prevent negative sustainability impacts.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Compatibility, Strategy
Continuously improve projects through regular reviews and iteration, integrating technical debt and security management, determining if new or existing functionality is required.
Human-testable and Resources
Establish policies and practices to enable continuous improvement and resource practices appropriately to support these efforts over time.
Human-testable and Resources
Review deliverables and update frequency to ensure project teams have enough time to conduct user research, identify technical debt, and produce high-quality output as well as share what they learned.
Machine-testable and Resources
Display a track record of continuous improvement (iteration) processes to analyze the digital product or service. Simultaneously address any potential consequences of ongoing experimentation, such as technical debt, product performance, and emissions. Analytics are limited to strictly necessary features that aid decision-making, encouraging user feedback, and comparing performance against business goals and user needs.
Human-testable and Resources
Justify and prioritize the retention of existing features, the creation of new functionality, and the decommissioning or elimination of unused functionality or low-traffic content throughout the product's life cycle on a case-by-case basis.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide corrective security and policy updates during the product or service life cycle. These should be distinguished from more extensive evolutionary updates.
Human-testable and Resources
Develop sustainable product and data strategies using appropriate training techniques. These should help your team build capacity and learn new skills to manage and maintain products and services over time.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Compatibility, KPIs, Performance, Security, Strategy, UI
Provide documentation to help users find their way whenever functionality changes.
Human-testable and Resources
When a feature is added, updated, or removed to improve user experience, clear documentation of the changes is provided in a well structured, semantically versioned document.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
# Changelog - Website ## [Unreleased] - N/A ## 1.0.0 - YYYY-MM-DD ### Added - Content. ## [Guide] - Added: New features. - Changed: Altered functionality. - Deprecated: Disappearing features. - Removed: Eliminated features. - Fixed: Bugs patched. - Security: Solved vulnerabilities.
Tags
Compatibility, Content, Education, Usability
Determine whether a project is necessary, avoiding duplication of existing efforts, creating obstacles for users, and aligning with SDGs and sustainability principles.
Machine-testable and Resources
Identify where the product or service aligns with one of the U.N. (SDGs) and its appropriate targets within a sustainability statement.
Human-testable and Resources
Determine that the product or service is necessary based upon desirability, feasibility, and viability factors.
Human-testable and Resources
Establish that no existing digital product or service offers the same value. Conduct an analysis to understand the market for this requirement.
Human-testable and Resources
Remove or alleviate any obstacles to using a product or service, such as accessibility, equality, technical, or territorial.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
E-Waste, Ideation, Reporting, Software
Identify the potential impact that a digital product or service will have throughout its lifetime by conducting an LCA.
Human-testable and Resources
Conduct a life-cycle assessment (LCA) to define sustainability-related functional impacts throughout a product's lifetime.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Ideation, Reporting, Research
Vet suppliers before onboarding, then collaborate to promote and encourage better sustainability practices.
Machine-testable and Resources
Create specific policies to vet potential partners along the supply chain based on sustainability principles.
Human-testable and Resources
Partner with suppliers to create, track and measure impact on issues that impact affected parties.
Machine-testable and Resources
Promote and disclose partnerships in a publicly available place, along with information on how the partnership creates a collective impact.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Governance, Hardware, Ideation, Social Equity
Share benefits associated with being sustainably resilient with workers, incentivizing efforts, and advocating for those involved to meet sustainability goals.
Machine-testable and Resources
Publicly commit to paying employees, contractors, and other affected parties a living wage.
Human-testable and Resources
Have policies and practices to incentivize affected parties, such as workers and contractors, to meet impact goals.
Machine-testable and Resources
Provide benefits to employees in accordance with resources, including, where relevant, healthcare, retirement planning, flex time, profit sharing, and more.
Human-testable and Resources
Advocate for responsible legislation that supports employment rights, transparency, and accountability related to sharing economic benefits.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Governance, Social Equity
Ensure that all affected parties have the opportunity to get involved in helping the organisation become more sustainable.
Human-testable and Resources
Align the project team's goals with key business objectives, and affected parties (for example, project managers) have the power and autonomy to make key decisions on the organization's behalf.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Ideation, Social Equity, Strategy
Implement JEDI practices to foster inclusive hiring practices within an organization, showing evidence of improvement over time.
Human-testable and Resources
Document commitments to JEDI practices with clear policies on how marginalized or otherwise underserved communities are prioritized.
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish a publicly displayed accessibility policy and demonstrate this via accessible digital products or services.
Human-testable and Resources
Provide JEDI-related training materials and schedule regular workshops related to how this topic manifests itself in digital products and services, covering topics such as algorithmic bias, digital divide, employment, mis- and disinformation.
Human-testable and Resources
Show measurable improvement over time across hiring, leadership, and operations.
Human-testable and Resources
Advocate for responsible legislation relating to JEDI practices, especially as they relate to digital products and services.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Accessibility, Ideation, Social Equity, Strategy
Provide publicly accessible versions of documents required by law in a sustainable, easy-to-consume format, while also observing ethical data retention practices.
Machine-testable and Resources
Maintain a publicly accessible privacy policy, terms and conditions, and any other documents as required by law in the jurisdictions in which the product or service operates. Adhere to the most restrictive data protection regulations, especially when providing services outside the organization's country. Provide documents in accessible formats and use clear, user-friendly language to ensure comprehension by all users. Avoid unnecessary jargon, technical language, and legalese. Support emerging legislation and implement best practices related to data privacy, sustainability, and responsible data management.
Human-testable and Resources
Demonstrate measurable progress over time in regard to respecting data privacy and ownership. Specify how data disposal and a user's "right to be forgotten" or opt-out will be handled, along with ownership rights. Also, provide the ability to download or export data they have contributed into a non-proprietary format.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Governance, Privacy, Social Equity
Allow users to manage, control, and delete their data upon request, while making outdated content searchable via a lightweight and simple archive.
Machine-testable and Resources
Archive and delete outdated or otherwise expired product content and data via automated expiration dates and scheduled product audits. Publish the archiving schedule, ensuring a lightweight version of the old searchable content is maintained for those that may require it.
Machine-testable and Resources
Allow users to control, manage, and delete their data, subscriptions, and accounts.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Privacy, Security, Social Equity, Strategy
Implement policies, training, and auditing practices for new or emerging technologies to ensure sustainability upon implementation, while accounting for associated legal issues.
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish public-facing policies for emerging technologies. Ensure all such technologies and their datasets are ethically sourced, screened, validated, and implemented in a non-discriminatory, responsible manner.
Human-testable and Resources
Show how workers are trained as new technologies and practices potentially disrupt an organizations business model.
Human-testable and Resources
Support and comply with responsible legislation related to emerging technologies
Human-testable and Resources
Audit and account for any environmental considerations that may derive from the use of emerging technologies wishing to be promoted or implemented. This should include third-party choices, the expense in terms of waste or emissions of using the technology to create a desired result, and consequences that may arise from its deployment.
Human-testable and Resources
Ensure all automated tooling, scrapers, spiders, bots, artificial intelligence, and other forms of machine-assisted data gathering abides by requests to opt out at the host, server, or website level. Providers must declare themselves as non-human within the user-agent/HTTP header. Providers must also publish impact reports relating to their gathering activities.
Human-testable and Resources
Do not roll out post-quantum encryption for high-traffic services that do not need resilience against harvest now, decrypt later attacks, where attackers steal encrypted data, anticipating that future quantum computers will be powerful enough to break the encryption and make the data readable at a later date.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, E-Waste, Governance, Hardware, Networking, Performance, Privacy, Security, Social Equity, Software
Ensure that a project is suitably budgeted for and funded through sustainable and ethical sources.
Machine-testable and Resources
Divest from fossil fuels and move banking, sponsorship, and other affiliations to more responsible partners.
Human-testable and Resources
Engage in flexible financing and responsible budgeting to accommodate long-term care and maintenance.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Governance, Ideation, Social Equity
Provide the opportunity to give back to the community through charitable or volunteer efforts via your organisation.
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish a clear corporate giving policy and create philanthropic partnerships with strategically aligned organizations.
Human-testable and Resources
Engage in free or volunteer projects to help teams learn new tools and tactics, while also helping charities and non-profit organizations to build capacity.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, Governance, Social Equity
Produce documentation to ensure that when a project is shut down, visitors are made aware of what will happen to their data.
Human-testable and Resources
Provide clear, documented end-of-life guidelines that include data disposal, archiving, file deletion, and other relevant guidance.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Compatibility, E-Waste, Research, Social Equity, Software, Strategy
Include policies and documentation explaining how sustainable e-waste, recycling, repairing, and refurbishment are handled.
Human-testable and Resources
Establish specific policies around e-waste recycling and repair owned technology products whenever possible.
Human-testable and Resources
Form relationships with local partners for e-waste recycling and repair.
Human-testable and Resources
Buy refurbished equipment whenever possible.
Human-testable and Resources
Allow consumers to repair the consumables they purchase to the best of their ability, offering replacement components if possible at cost, and provide clear instructions to help resolve faults that occur.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Content, E-Waste, Governance, Hardware, Ideation, Social Equity
Provide budgets, taking the people, planet, and performance into account alongside baselines, targets, evidence, and resources to help meet KPIs.
Machine-testable and Resources
Define and document clear sustainability budget criteria that covers impact from creation to consumption. Communicate this to affected parties.
Machine-testable and Resources
Use a performance budget to set a target maximum size of your digital product or service to monitor and reduce impact of data transfer, file type size, and more.
Human-testable and Resources
Define KPIs around engineering hours, development time, or sprints while keeping the health and well-being of your workers paramount. Sustainably optimize workflows to allow all tasks to be performed with care.
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish a baseline and measurement criteria to track improvements over time. Improvement claims must be evidenced and verifiable.
Human-testable and Resources
Invest in resources to build capacity and maintain budgets over time.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Example
[
{
"resourceSizes": [],
"timings": [
{
"metric": "largest-contentful-paint",
"budget": 2500
},
{
"metric": "max-potential-fid",
"budget": 100
},
{
"metric": "cumulative-layout-shift",
"budget": 0.1
}
]
}
]
Tags
Accessibility, Ideation, KPIs, Performance, Research, Usability
Produce a policy around open collaboration and contribution to creating and sustaining open source projects.
Machine-testable and Resources
Establish a clear open source policy that outlines how open-source tools are used and any practices used to support open-source development.
Human-testable and Resources
Show a track record of collaboration and building communities around open-source principles.
Machine-testable and Resources
Contribute regularly in terms of code, human-time, and/or financially, to open-source community-based projects.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Assets, Ideation, Social Equity, Software, UI
Create a plan of action with a system to recover from failure or alert users if or when a loss of service occurs.
Human-testable and Resources
Create, regularly review, and occasionally test a plan of action to determine readiness in case of an incident and establish procedures to quickly recover from any incident.
Machine-testable and Resources
Maintain regular and transparent communication with the audience regarding issues that may affect service delivery or user data.
Benefits
You can find details about complying with [[GRI]] through the body behind the standard.
Tags
Governance, Security, Strategy
Guidelines within this specification which the Interest Group has identified possible implications for accessibility, privacy, or security, either by providing protections for end users or which are important for website providers to take in to consideration when implementing features designed to implement digital sustainability, are listed below. This list reflects the current understanding of the Interest Group but other guidelines may have implications that the Interest Group is not aware of at the time of publishing.
Individuals or organizations wishing to understand more about best practices relating to these objectives should read the relevant materials provided by W3C Working and Interest Groups in this area, as the result of good accessibility, privacy, and security, can benefit both people and the planet in measurable ways.
It is relevant to note that groups working on accessibility, privacy, and security may identify sustainability impacts within their work and may provide relevant guidance where appropriate on best practices to limit the scope of these concerns. Any such guidance should be considered as complementary to that provided within the WSG.
Guidelines within this specification that may relate to accessibility are:
Guidelines within this specification that may relate to privacy are:
Guidelines within this specification that may relate to security are:
Web accessibility (within the context of inclusive design) means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities (and those without) can use them, free of barriers.
Types of accessibility barriers can include auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech, and visual. They can also be permanent, temporary, or situational (depending on the situation).
Planet, People, and Prosperity (PPP) is a set of principles that recommends considering each of these factors during the sustainability process.
This method of considering both people and the planet (alongside the needs of business) is known under other abbreviations with similar objectives such as Environmental, Social, and (corporate) Governance (ESG), which considers economic factors alongside; there is also Environment, Equity, and Economy (EEE) that follow a similar pattern.
Such work is grounded within the three pillars of sustainability:
For information purposes and not required for compliance.
Content identified as "informative" or "non-normative" is never required for compliance.
Required for compliance.
An approach to designing digital products and services that puts people and the planet first.
Aiming for a clean (hosted using carbon-free energy), efficient (using the fewest resources possible), open (accessible and user-controlled data), honest (avoiding misleading or exploiting users), regenerative (support people and the planet), and resilient (function under any circumstances) service or product.
Additional information about participation in the Sustainable Web Interest Group can be found within the GitHub repository of the Interest Group.
Alexander Dawson, Alisa Bonsignore, Andrea Davanzo, Andrew Wright, Andy Blum, Anne Faubry, Arnaud Levy, Ben Clifford, Berwyn Powell, Brett Tackaberry, Brian Louis Ramirez, Chris Adams, Chris Augier, Chris Butterworth, Chris Needham, Chris Sater, Chris Wilson, Claire Thornewill, Daniel Appelquist, David Jeanmonod, Dennis Lemm, Diogo Abrantes Da Silva, Dom Robinson, Dominique Hazael-Massieux, Emily Trotter, Fershad Irani, Florian Rivoal, Francesco Fullone, François Burra, Gaël Duez, Hidde de Vries, Iain McClenaghan, Ian Jacobs, Ines Akrap, Ismael Velasco, Iulia Raluca Ionita, James Christie, Jeffrey Yasskin, Jennifer Strickland, Jens Oliver Meiert, Jim McCool, Josh Kim, Julien Wilhelm, Kazuhito Kidachi, Laurent Devernay Satyagraha, Len Dierickx, Leon Brocard, Łukasz Mastalerz, Marie Ototoi, Michelle Barker, Mike Gifford, Morgan Murrah, Nahuai Badiola, Neil Clark, Nick Doty, Nick Lewis, Nicola Bonotto, Orie Steele, Owen Barton, Owen Rogers, Peter Krautzberger, Philippe Le Hégaret, Romuald Priol, Rose Newell, Rudolf Van Der Berg, Ryan Sholin, Sandy Dähnert, Sarah Zama, Shane Herath, Siddhesh Wagle, Simon Perdrisat, Susannah Hill, Tantek Çelik, Thibaud Colas, Thorsten Jonas, Tim Frick, Tzviya Siegman, Youen Chéné, Yuna Orsini, Zoe Lopez-Latorre.
Adam Newman, Aiste Rugeviciute, Alekh Gupta, Alicia Pritchett, Anthony Vallée-Dubois, Antoine Abélard, Asim Hussain, Bee Flaherty, Boris Schapira, Brian Sharpe, Carine Bournez, Christian H Brown, Christophe Clouzeau, Christos Bacharakis, Crystal Preston-Watson, Danielle Subject, Denis Didier, Edward Bender, Elise West, Eloisa Guerrero, Emma Horrell, Florence Maurice, Gerry McGovern, Greg McDonald, Hannah Smith, Ignacio Rondini, Ivano Malavolta, James Cannings, James Gallagher, Jan Henckens, Jean Rigotti, Jeroen Hulscher, Jon Gibbins, Juan Sotés, Julien Robitaille, Kate Mroczkowski, Katya Dreyer-Oren, Kimi Wei, Laila Tamani, Leah Goldfarb, Lenchi Danch, Loren Velasquez, Louise Towler, Luciene Bulhões Mattos, Luis Tiago, Manfred Jurgovsky, Marie Koesnodihardjo, Mark Butcher, Marketa Benisek, Mert Altinöz, Michelle Sanver, Moritz Guth, Nick Oliveira, Nick Sollecito, Nicolas Lanthemann, Nicholas Oliveira, Nicolas Oren, Oliver Winks, Patrick Hypscher, Pietro Jarre, Radu Micu, Rafael Lebre, Rebecca Brocton, Rick Butterfield, Rick Viscomi, Robin Whittleton, Samuel Pitoňák, Sandra Pallier, Sarven Capadisli, Sebastien Solere, Sylvain Tenier, Thierry Leboucq, Thomas Alexander Munch-Woolff, Tom Greenwood, Tom Howells, Torsten Beyer, Tristan Nitot, Yelle Lieder, Youcef Bekhti.
Note that this changelog only identifies substantive changes since the final draft Community Group Report dated Dec 6, 2024.
For a list of all issues addressed, refer to the Interest Group and former Community Group issue trackers.
Additions:
Updates:
Fixes:
Additions:
Updates:
Fixes:
Additions:
Updates:
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Additions:
Updates:
Fixes:
If you spot any new bugs, or have new content or ideas to include, submit an issue.