Apidays London 2024 - The Web Sustainability Guidelines by Alexander Dawson, W3C

The Web Sustainability Guidelines
Alexander Dawson, Sustainability Group Co-Chair - W3C

apidays London 2024 - APIs for Smarter Platforms and Business Processes
September 18 & 19, 2024

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Transcript

1. The Web Sustainability Guidelines Advisory guidance for digital sustainability Alexander Dawson Green IO (London 2024)
2. Why be sustainable? • The digital industry is now responsible for 2-5% of global emissions. • Web sustainability bene fi ts people as well as the planet, and it uses many practices we're already aware of (performance, accessibility, etc). • Being sustainable increases trust and reduces your potential risk of greenwashing claims, negative publicity, or legal non-compliance. • Governments and international bodies are addressing digital impacts.
3. What are the WSGs? • A set of guidelines to help anyone more easily apply sustainability principles to digital products and services they create or manage. • They were founded on the great work of the WAI (such as WCAG); • They are evidence-backed using the latest research and techniques; • They are aligned with existing reporting standards (like GRI); • They can also assist with legislative conformance (such as CSRD). • You can measurably improve the Internet's Planet, People, and Prosperity (PPP) impact by implementing the Web Sustainability Guidelines.
4. Who created the WSGs? • Sustainable Web Community Group CGs are W3C incubator projects to stimulate discussion around evolving the Web - which is how our group got to where it is! • We have over 200 group members with more than 100 active contributors to the speci fi cation from 18 countries! • The WSGs have reached their eighth draft with over 150 Github stars (and we welcome new contributors). • Our Community Group is in the early stages of transitioning to becoming an o ff i cial W3C Group.
5. • Description Information about why the guideline is important and its sustainability impact. • Success Criteria One or more technical goals are required to fully meet the speci fi ed guideline. • Impact & E ff ort How easy or di ffi cult it will be to implement or the sustainability bene fi t it will provide. • Bene fi ts A list of other meaningful enhancements the change will have upon sites or apps. • Reporting Details about how a particular guideline aligns for compliance with the GRI standard. • Example Either a code or link-based example to help showcase potential implementations. • Resources Evidence-based citations, useful tools, and learning materials to help with guidelines. • Tags Metadata that can be utilized from within the WSG JSON API for content fi ltering. Guideline Structure
6. Guidelines Overview 94 Guidelines 1,500+ References & Citations 250 Success Criteria Hosting and Infrastructure Business and Product Strategy Metrics and Research Web Development User-Experience Design 600+ Pages
7. 4.1 Choose a Sustainable Hosting Provider • Guideline Overview Choose a hosting service that mitigates the remaining impacts. • Success Criteria • Monitor Metrics (CPU, GPU, RAM) & (PUE, WUE, CUE). • Equipment Longevity (Keep as long as possible). • Recycling Waste (Recover, recycle, and upcycle waste). • Renewable Electricity (Wind or solar rather than non-renewable). • Remaining Emissions (Anything leftover should be compensated for). • Benefits Environmental (Renewables) Economic (Less waste & overpurchasing).
8. Supplementary Documents At-A-Glance Overview Introduction to Web Sustainability Quick Reference and Checklist WSG JSON API Sustainable Tooling And Reporting (STAR) Sustainable Web Design Website Web Sustainability Laws & Policies
9. Thanks for listening! Questions & Answers Please consider joining our community. https://www.w3.org/community/sustyweb/ Check out our (draft) speci fi cation. https://w3c.github.io/sustyweb/