Sustainability Labels as Green Claims for Software – A preliminary Investigation (Max Westing)
In recent years, the sustainability of software has received growing attention. Transparency plays a key role in building trust in sustainability claims. To support this, various certifications and labels have been introduced to verify the environmental impact of software applications.
Max Westing, a member of the Green Coding project team, delves deeper into this topic in his paper „Sustainability Labels as Green Claims for Software – A preliminary Investigation“.
The paper explores the multiple functions that sustainability labels serve for different stakeholders, including companies, consumers, policymakers, and NGOs and it also provides an overview of life cycle assessment (LCA) methods. Furthermore, the author links regulatory intentions and the relevance of sustainability evaluations in the digital context with the current landscape of standardization and green IT labels.
Serving as a foundation for future work, Westing proposes the development of a comprehensive database of sustainability labels, certifications, and tools to enhance the accessibility and clarity of sustainability information.
Abstract
Sustainability labels and claims about environmental impacts on products have become almost ubiquitous, occasioning the EU to propose a directive, regulating such claims. With the EU positioning itself at the forefront of regulating digital technologies and sustainability of digital technologies, including software, continuing to evolve as a discipline, this paper aims to provide an overview of the state of software sustainability standards and labels in the context of the proposed regulation and wider framework for sustainability assessment a EU level. We attempt to connect this with existing scientific literature on software sustainability certification and standardization, to serve as a starting point for future work, synthesizing existing knowledge on software sustainability with the regulatory framework intended for environmental claims, certification and standardization.
