Sustainability improvements

Improvements across three key areas for Wagtail sites’ carbon footprints: measurements, awareness, tangible reductions. To see widespread improvements across Wagtail’s ecosystem, for example in how Wagtail sites score on digital carbon ratings:

Intended outcome

Exact improvements to be determined. Current plans:

• 🔍 Measure the carbon footprint of Wagtail
  1. Create a methodology to measure the carbon footprint of Wagtail websites
  2. Measure the carbon footprint of building Wagtail: Wagtail events
  3. Establish a methodology to collect data about how many Wagtail websites there are and their characteristics
• 📣 Spread the word
  1. Create a sustainability team for Wagtail
  2. Refine Wagtail’s current sustainability statement, and make it more visible
  3. Publish case studies on tackling sustainability-related requirements on Wagtail projects
• 📉 Reduce the carbon footprint of Wagtail
  1. Scale-to-zero CMS database
  2. Scale-to-zero CMS server
  3. Light YouTube embeds
  4. Reporting of performance scores in the CMS
  5. Starter templates focused on sustainability
  6. Support for static sites with 90+% of CMS features

More information

• RFC 90: Sustainability roadmap
• Sustainability considerations for Wagtail sites #38
• sustainability roadmap #64
• Introducing our grid-aware websites project
• GSoC 2024: Low-carbon project templates

To deliver this roadmap item, we are looking for a feature sponsorship ❤️.

Start by reading RFC 90: Sustainability roadmap and the linked roadmap issues #38 and #64 to understand the existing plans. The issue names measurements, awareness, and reductions but leaves the exact improvements and completion criteria undecided, so no implementation entry point or concrete definition of done is provided.