I have a new book out on creating the sustainable web
Published on July 6, 2026
Finally, after a lot of work over a long period of time, I have a new non-fiction book out, co-written with Ines Akrap. It’s “Building the Sustainable Web”, out with Apress now.
Building the Sustainable Web takes you through the entire digital stack, showing where impact happens, why it matters, and how to make meaningful progress. From infrastructure choices and backend architecture to frontend performance, UX design, content strategy, and marketing practices, this book gives you practical ways to make digital products lighter, faster, and more responsible. It also explains what we can measure today, what remains uncertain, and how to navigate that complexity without getting stuck.
A little over two years ago, I pitched the book to a commissioning editor from Apress at Web Summit about a topic I’d been thinking about for a while. How to make the apps and services we build and run more sustainable. And shortly, Ines joined as a co-writer, and her contributions, conversations, and experience were invaluable.
At the time, the topic was in the zeitgeist, with most hyperscalers and the companies below their scale spending time creating and maintaining sustainability reports and teams. The modern wave of AI tools was in their infancy, but we were already talking about their impact on the planet. Oddly, when we started the book, AI was going to be one part of one chapter. It then became one chapter, and honestly, now, it could have been the entire book.
Times change, especially when working on a book. We finished most of the writing months ago, which unfortunately means many details are likely already out of date. I think much of the practical information on building more sustainable infrastructure, backends, and front ends remains useful and applicable. But definitely, the field of AI has rapidly moved on, as has much of the talk on regulation and, more generally, the attitudes of companies and others toward the topic.
But it’s here now! If you care even remotely about sustainable, planet-friendly development and design. If you care about optimising for performance or even cost saving, this is a book for you and your team.
We also aim to keep an accompanying GitHub repository up to date with any pressing changes or new tools we think you should know about.
We hope you buy, read, enjoy, and share. I would like to thank Ines for working with me, as well as Anita Schüttler for the technical review, and all the staff at Apress, especially James, who listened to my pitch. I would like to thank Chris Adams, the people of Green.io and the CNCF sustainability tag for putting up with a lot of my questions and technical fumbling. I would like to thank all the people I interviewed for the book for their insights.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife Cate for putting up with me vanishing regularly to work on yet another side project.
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