Episode 50 - Sustainability at WordPress: an update with Csaba Varszegi, Nahuai Badiola, and Nora Ferreiros

Three members of the original WordPress sustainability team joined Gael Duez in E52 of Green IO podcast to give an update on what is currently happening in the WordPress sustainability community. Csaba Varszegi, based in Antwerp (BE), is a sustainable web designer, creating low carbon websites, especially WordPress (membership) sites. Nahuai Badiola is a freelance WordPress developer, theme and plugin creator, writer of WordPress code tutorials podcaster and blogger who enjoys sharing everything he learns about web sustainability. Nora Ferreiros is a freelance UX/UI designer whose approach is driven by the impact of her work on people and the planet. She advocates for environmental sustainability and other ethical practices in tech while actively contributing to open-source projects, primarily WordPress. Nahuai and Nora are both based in Barcelona (ESP). 

Humble beginnings

For Nahuai, the sustainability journey began whilst listening to a talk by Roberto Vázquez in an annual community-organized WordCamp conference, showcasing data center energy consumption and the subsequent environmental impact. He then reached out to influential actors such as Hannah Smith (see Green IO podcast E5 ‘Greening WordPress’), and his personal interest and momentum then developed. Nora explains how in fact it was Nahuai who led her to the sustainability debate, encouraging her to ask a question about sustainability at the annual Wordcamp 2022, recalling “...there was applause from the audience, which showed there was enthusiasm for the subject”. Support from the general community led to a response from the Direction, authorizing a Slack channel on the topic.  Csaba explains that given Wordpress' large CMS market share, ‘for me it was a reflection on how to add impact at a wider scale, not just act at an individual level’, and he was one of the first people to manifest an interest and join up to the new WP sustainability community.

WordPress sustainability community & role

The aim was to keep everything simple, increase the accessibility to and uptake of sustainability issues and actions. The Slack community focused on the environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainability through:

• producing sustainability guidelines
• developing plugins – functional extensions which had the long-term goal to be included in core WordPress
• aspiring to renewable energy hosting 
• developing tools to measure the weight and carbon footprint of web pages

Drawbacks were also identified, such as the complexity of the task due to the myriad of social, environmental and economic aspects of sustainability to be integrated into WP, plus the reliance on the in-kind nature of the work. Being ‘self-sponsored’ means acting on behalf of the community as a volunteer, whilst trying to take into account the community’s differing views and needs. This shows that collaboration and transparency are key, and that a two-way flow is needed, benefiting the community, product and users in general.

WordPress Ecosystem

It has to be said that the WordPress ecosystem is a complex one. WordPress.com is a (for-profit) hosted blogging service which uses WordPress open source CMS that is currently owned by Automattic Inc. WordPress.org provides tools to build a website from scratch, self-hosted. The WordPress Foundation is a not-for-profit entity without strategic assets, yet to which Automattic.Inc gave the commercial rights to the WP trademark (who then sub-lease them back again).

Dismantling of Sustainability Team and Slack channel

All three guests were clearly surprised at the decision taken to dismantle the group with its 14 self-sponsored reps, as it was a community effort without any particular vested interests (apart from driving sustainability). The guests believe it was certainly a one-sided decision, as there were no prior discussions, but as Nahuai rightly points out, it is all set in the context of Automattic’s current legal battles with WP Engine (a specific hosting platform). It therefore shows that internal politics can still be very influential, and they can work with or against a sustainability agenda, meaning transparent governance is at the very heart of driving the sustainability agenda.

Moving forward, staying positive

The three guests were equally unsure as to how any sustainability work will be carried on, but they were adamant that it will continue in some way, shape or form. It is still very much open to discussion, and anyone can get in contact to help direct the next steps, and certain tools are currently available on GitHub.  Positive action is still the mantra too, as Nahuai continues to drive sustainability forward through his series of 8 podcast episodes about WP and sustainability community (a GWF fellowship). Nora, too, is actively delivering change as she is part of the GWF working group on grid-aware computing, and Csaba champions digital sustainability on a daily basis. All is definitely not lost!