What is carbon.txt?
carbon.txt makes sustainability data easier to discover and use on the web. Carbon.txt is a single, discoverable location on any web domain for public, machine-readable, sustainability data relating to that company.
It’s a web-first, connect not collect style approach, of most benefit to those interested in scraping the structured data companies have to publish according to national laws. Designed to be extended by default, we see carbon.txt becoming essential infrastructure for sustainability data services crunching available numbers and sharing the stories it can tell.
Why do we need this?
The Green Web Foundation is oriented around the world reaching a fossil free internet by 2030. For this to be possible, the firms that make up large parts of the internet need to do two main things:
- Make clear public commitments to reduce their carbon emissions
- Follow through on their commitments with meaningful action.
However, at this time, being able to verify that an organisation has done part one of that process, and is active in undertaking part two remains a challenge. Reliably finding credible data in formats that can be easily interpreted by humans and machines remains a major limitation.
Carbon.txt is our open-source project to make this sustainability information easier to discover. It is a spec that defines predictable, consistent places on any website to publish sustainability data so that both humans and machines can find it.
The spec, and tooling around it, also aims to be extendible so that it can be applied to make organisational disclosures discoverable for any number of areas such as water usage, modern slavery, etc.
Carbon.txt features
Surface organisational sustainability data
Bring data reported in organisational sustainability reports and disclosures into the public domain in a format that is easily read by both humans and machines.
Extendible syntax
A simple, extendible syntax that can be used to describe a wide range of sustainability data, from carbon emissions to social impact, and be easily updated as new data types and mandated reporting requirements emerge.
Plugin architecture
A plugin architecture that allows for the easy integration of carbon.txt validation tools into existing platforms and software, enabling discovery and validation of sustainability data at scale across a range of use cases.