Frequently asked questions
While this concept is still new, we expect that some edge cases will be encountered. Here are some frequently asked questions we have internally.
Where should I store a carbon.txt file for my organisation?
You should upload your carbon.txt file to a location on your website that is easily discoverable for both humans and machines. We recommend placing it in the root directory of your website, or
in a well-known location such as /.well-known/.
The Quickstart guide has more information on uploading your carbon.txt file.
Why this approach?
There are a few reasons for taking the approach we’ve described on this site.
Primarily, we are adopting an approach which leans heavily on existing web standards, and technologies. This allows for familiarity, and we hope will lead to these ideas being easier to adopt/implement.
We believe that providing a simple way for organisations to implement the carbon.txt specification is key to broader adoption. It allows us, as a small not-for-profit driving this idea, to have a much larger reach & impact when compared to the alternative of relying on individual action. Buulding this project around a plugin ecosystem also allows for other organisations to build on top of the carbon.txt specification, and extend it in ways that we haven't thought of.
In the long run, we think that demonstrating how we can use existing internet and web standards to make sustainability claims easily discoverable, as well as human and machine readable, will result in a web where it's easier to trust green claims. Not only that, conventions like carbon.txt allows us follow green claims to the supporting evidence used to back them up.
What would stop me using someone else's carbon.txt file instead?
Carbon.txt files are publically accessible, and are designed to be easily discoverable. This means that anyone can access them, and use the information contained within them. It allows for transparency, and for anyone to verify the claims made by an organisation.
How does the carbon.txt validator work?
There are three ways to use the carbon.txt validator:
Check a website domain
When you enter a website domain, the validator will look for a carbon.txt file in the root of the website (e.g. https://example.com/carbon.txt). If it finds one, it will parse
the file and return the information contained within it. If it doesn't find a carbon.txt file at the root of the domain, then it will check for the file in a well-known location on the
server (e.g. https://example.com/.well-known/carbon.txt). Again, if it finds one, it will parse the file and return the information contained within it. If no file is found at
either location, then the validator will return an error message.
The diagram below shows this process visually.
Check a carbon.txt URL
When you enter a URL that points to a specific carbon.txt file (e.g. https://example.com/carbon.txt), the validator will look make a request to find the file at that location.
If it finds one, it will parse the file and return the information contained within it. If no file is found at either location, then the validator will return an error message.
Manually enter the content of a carbon.txt file
If you manually enter the content of a carbon.txt file, then the validator will try to parse the syntax that has been entered and return the information contained within it. If the syntax is incorrect, then the validator will return an error message.