Green Web Foundation

We've just released an update to carbon.txt, our standardised approach for sustainability transparency, and we think it's one of the most significant yet: you can now use carbon.txt to publicise your compliance with third party certification schemes such as B Lab, TCO Certified, or Blauer Engel! This was a complex feature to get right, and we're hugely grateful to the carbon.txt user community, in particular Siddhesh Wagle, Tim Frick, and Owen Rogers, for their time and insight in consulting with us on this new feature. Tim has written up all the details here, and you can start using the new features right now, in our carbon.txt builder and validator tools. https://lnkd.in/djK86edq #digitalsustainability #transparency #certification #standards

✨ Due to popular demand, we will run another free *Environmental Impacts of AI* taster session on November 19, from 14:00-15:00 CET ✨ If you want to understand the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence, and how they affect your organisations’ sustainability goals, then sign up and join! Chris Adams and Katrin Fritsch from Green Web Foundation will dive deeper into current standards of measuring AI’s environmental impacts, and show how to navigate these impacts for your sustainability targets. There will also be time for questions. https://lnkd.in/dDUj8UUK #ai #environment #standards #reporting #emissions #training

How can sustainable hosting providers help their customers to manage their sustainability claims, keeping them up to date, transparent and compliant? We've recently been working with Cyberfusion to integrate support for carbon.txt into their platform, so their customers can manage the sustainability claims for hundreds of sites in one place. This allows them to keep their claims discoverable, up to date and correct – something increasingly important in regions with new laws around green claims such as the EmpCo directive. Our head of policy and technology Chris Adams has the details! https://lnkd.in/e_6HimdU #hosting #sustainable #ICT #cloud #compliance #EmpCo

How can sustainable hosting providers help their customers to manage their sustainability claims, keeping them up to date, transparent and compliant? We've recently been working with Cyberfusion to integrate support for carbon.txt into their platform, so their customers can manage the sustainability claims for hundreds of sites in one place. This allows them to keep their claims discoverable, up to date and correct – something increasingly important in regions with new laws around green claims such as the EmpCo directive. Our head of policy and technology Chris Adams has the details! https://lnkd.in/e_6HimdU #hosting #sustainable #ICT #cloud #compliance #EmpCo

We're thrilled that the first version of DIST - the Digital Impacts Schema and Taxonomy - is now out in the world. We're also extremely grateful to Oliver Cronk for being an amazing collaborator, and representing the project at Green IO 🎙️last week! DIST is designed to make it easier than ever to understand, measure, and report the impacts of your organization's technology use. Its taxonomy of impacts helps you identify impacts for reporting, while the methodology map guides you in finding and applying appropriate methods for estimating or measuring them. Finally, the DIST schema ensures you can publish your reports in an open, transparent format. We hope this initiative will help make digital impact reporting easier, and more accessible for organizations of all sizes. There are more details on DIST in Ollie's post, and also in our blog post linked in the comments. If you'd like some expert advice or assistance in identifying, measuring, and reporting your digital impacts, get in touch for a free, no-obligation call to discuss how we might be able to help. #sustainability #reporting #impact #digitalsustainability

Last week was the first full week of the new "EmpCo" law. What does it mean for green hosting claims? We've written a guide if you use the Green Web Badges, or talk about green hosting and you're not sure what to do. TLDR: The new "Empco" law across Europe significantly tightens up what you are allowed to say about the products you sell to consumers, particularly if you use claims like "Carbon Neutral", "Green" and so on, without qualifying what these mean. If you're worried about falling afoul of the new law, the safest thing to do in the short term is to take down the green hosting badges you have on your site until we have the updated versions live, and to update your copy as suggested in the post. This is not legal advice (obvs). Slightly longer: ⚖️ The new Empco law or the "Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition" directive is a law that came into effect on September 27th 2026, and it effectively bans using phrases like 'green', 'climate friendly, 'carbon neutral' in marketing to consumers about products, without proof of this performance. 📋 In addition, any labelling schemes have to be ones registered ones with a country, or following a recognised international standard. Using a labelling schemes that don't follow this approach is not allowed. 🚨 There are fees for non-compliance, and they can be quite hefty (single-digit percentage-of-turnover in the country where infringements are deemed to take place). Each country in Europe has its own procedure for enforcing them. 🔎 We're looking into whether the Green Web Foundation's badge counts as a labelling scheme for a business to consumer product. If you're in doubt, play it safe - comment out the badge for now on your pages, and update any copy following the guidance in our post we link to. 📊 We've also been looking into what converting our free verification service into a full blown certification scheme would look like, now that we've completed a two year project to overhaul the verification criteria based on the most rigourous standards we can find in use. 🤯 Right now, it looks like the cost will be significantly greater than the donations we receive to fund the current verification scheme. We're a small non-profit looking into our options for funding this, so if you find value in our work, and interested in contributing to funding it, we'd love to hear from you. As per Linkedin's custom, the link to the full post with recommendations is in the comments. ^Chris Michael J. Oghia Tim Frick Wholegrain Digital Max Schulze Alexander Dawson Tzviya Siegman Geerd-Dietger (Didi) Hoffmann Arne Tarara Anita Schüttler Lydia Tabbron Rose Newell Asim Hussain @ #digitalsustainability #empco #green #hosting #decarbonisation #carbonfree #standards

This Saturday, Katrin Fritsch will be part of a session at re:publica on AI: Myths & Power Structures together with Gwendolin Barnard and Julia Kloiber. She will speak about the environmental impacts of AI, and how dismantle the narratives. If you are interested and in Vienna, come and join! 10:00-11:00 CET Kuppelsaal #ai #myths #environment #work #feminism https://lnkd.in/dhei6qyq

The new Green Web Newsletter is out, have a look to see what we have been up to!

Reaching a fossil-free internet is a core part of our organisation's mission, and from October 2026 we're asking hosting providers seeking verification in our dataset to share a statement showing their own commitments for the same. As part of the changes we are making to our verification criteria, providers will have the option to share a  simple public statement that states their commitment to using 100% hourly matched fossil-free energy for their hosting infrastructure. On our blog, we've written a bit more about why we're doing this, what it means, and how providers can get started using a copy and paste template we've prepared. We also share information about our own commitment and progress towards being fossil-free for the hosting infrastructure we use. Find out more on our Green Web Foundation blog (link in the comments)! ^ Fershad Irani

Next week - Wed 30 Sept and Thur 1 Oct - will see Green IO 🎙️ London 2026 take place. If you're interested in finding out about cutting edge digital sustainability practices this is an event well worth attending. We're grateful to Oliver Cronk, a committed open source contributor to our new DIST (Digital Impacts Schema and Taxonomy) project, who'll be running a workshop in the first slot of the first day (no pressure!) sharing the key concepts of DIST and how it can help those grappling with digital sustainability reporting. See the full GreenIO London 2026 agenda here: https://lnkd.in/enbmBSBg Find out more about DIST here: https://dist.greenweb.org/ We have a few free tickets for anyone who'd like to attend GreenIO. Leave a comment if you'd like to have one - first come first served! (Our own Director of Operations, Hannah Smith, was due to be a co-present with Oliver but has sadly had to pull out due to a family bereavement).