5.1 Have an Ethical and Sustainability Product Strategy
Create a publicly available statement in an easy-to-find location on your website that outlines a clear commitment to prioritize ethics and sustainability ESG standards that align with the organization’s mission, vision, and values and include statements specific to digital products, services, policies, and programs. This should be done while actively promoting such efforts (with evidence) using social channels.
Criteria
- Statement Availability: The organization has published a publicly available Code of Ethics, Product Guidelines, Sustainability, or ESG Statement that includes language specific to digital products, services, policies, and programs.
- Achievements And Compliance: List achievements, features, compliance, and anything beyond the scope of these guidelines and publish it in a sustainability section of your product or service.
- Governance Over Time: The organization can show how it effectively governs implemented digital sustainability, climate policies, and related ESG practices over time.
- Onboarding New Members: The organization has training decks and workshops it uses to onboard new team members on how it implements more sustainable product strategies.
- Documentation: Raise awareness with your visitors by documenting your methodology, through impact storytelling, documentation, and helping individuals make more informed decisions.
- Renewable Showcasing: The organization can show how it powers digital products and services with renewable energy.
Impact
High
Effort
High
Benefits
- Environmental:
A clear sustainability statement should make it easier to align organizational policies and practices with measurable metrics to support goals. And, if included early in digital product strategy, can benefit from improved efficiency and reduced environmental impact. - Privacy:
By trying to reduce your emissions, and explaining to a wider audience how you aim to keep your sustainability promises, you can also highlight other key areas of visitor value as ethically important, such as privacy and security (which will gain visitor trust in your brand). - Transparency:
A clear, public-facing set of policies helps internal and external stakeholders better understand an organization’s commitments. - Social Equity:
Highlighting intersectional social issues in documentation, storytelling, and marketing materials raises awareness of both problems and potential solutions. - Accessibility:
Prioritizing inclusive design both in user-interfaces and storytelling raises awareness of accessibility barriers, improves experience for people with disabilities, and will reduce emissions by reducing barriers to access which may trigger wasted traffic. - Economic:
Transparent communication on how an organization shares the economic benefits of its digital work raises awareness of social inequalities. Similarly, helping visitors make more informed decisions can support a more financially sustainable product or service overall. A clear statement of intent will also make it easier for the company to measure and report on its impact efforts. - Operations:
Product teams are more engaged in the work they’re doing.
GRI
- materials: High
- energy: High
- water: High
- emissions: High
Example
- Here are some great examples of a Code of Ethics, an Ethical Policy, a corporate digital responsibility document, a sustainability template, a sustainability policy, a code of conduct, and in Italian, a range of useful policy examples (PDF): A code of Conduct, Ethics, Environment, and Marketing.
Resources
- 6 steps to reduce the carbon footprint of your website
- A Guide To Developing Your Organization’s Code of Ethics (PDF)
- Action Plan for Sustainable Planet in the Digital Age (PDF)
- [AFNOR] Spec 5.2.3 and 5.4.4 (French)
- Are my third parties green?
- Best Sustainability Statements
- Built With
- Can the Internet Survive Climate Change?
- Climate Product Management Playbook
- Creating a company’s first sustainability report
- Defining ESG vs. Sustainability
- Digital Eco-Design: L’intérêt de communiquer (French)
- Digital Eco-Design: Sensibiliser les utilisateurs (French)
- Does ESG really matter—and why?
- EcoGrader
- [GR491] 2-3014 – Compliance Labelling
- Green Web Checker
- How Google takes the pain out of code reviews, with 97% dev satisfaction
- How to amplify your sustainability efforts through your user-experience
- How to Build Effective Sustainability Governance Structures
- How To Create Your Own Code of Ethics (With Examples)
- How To Write a Code of Ethics: 5 Steps to Follow
- How to Write an Effective Product Requirements Documents
- Microsoft Green Design Principles (PDF)
- Mitigating our impact on the planet through service design
- Quick Guide to Sustainable Design Strategies
- [RGESN] (French) 1.12 – Ecodesign Statement
- [RGESN] (French) 4.14 – Informed Visitors
- Sales & Marketing
- Sustainability Product Strategy
- Sustainability Statements
- Sustainability Storytelling Checklist
- Sustainable UX is more than reducing your website’s footprint
- Sustainable Web Development Strategies Within An Organization
- The carbon.txt Proposed Standard
- The Carbon Impact of Web Standards (PDF)
- Website Carbon
- Why sustainability is crucial for corporate strategy