Umbraco Reinforces Commitment to Global Impact with 2025 Sustainability Team

What does sustainability mean to you?

For those of us in the digital experience industry, it means being more responsible about our carbon footprint and rethinking our web strategies to reduce the impact on the planet. But it's also a word that expresses a deep concern about the future – and how our efforts today can translate into a more stable and fruitful world tomorrow. 

In early April of this year, Umbraco published its third annual Impact Report, transparently documenting its vision for sustainable action and its holistic culture to activate change at a global level. Among its peers in the broader industry, Umbraco has long exemplified how a business can tap profitability, build loyalty, and scale to new heights while embracing sustainable practices. 

In my analysis of the report, I noted how Umbraco synthesized the company’s business and financial performance with its commitment and responsibility to the CMS industry and the world at large. Taken together, it crystallized Umbraco’s successful investment in sustainable strategies and told an inspiring story about how a business can do good in our world.

As a next step in shepherding its vision for the year ahead, the open-source .NET CMS provider has revealed the members of its 2025 Sustainability Team, who were culled from its 250,000-strong global community of web developers, designers, content managers, and business leaders.

I had a chance to connect with Martin Wülser Larsen, Umbraco’s Business Excellence Manager and new Sustainability Team steward, about Umbraco’s focus on sustainability. He brings a self-described role of “sustainability enthusiast” to his resume, and is squarely centered on managing and supporting this community-based team.

Why such a deep conviction to sustainability?

“There is no long-term upside to not focusing on sustainability,” Martin said. “Working sustainably has, for good reason, become a demand from clients, partners, and employees alike.”

As Martin indicated, there are compelling forces at play. Some of the need is driven by EU legislation being rolled out (albeit later than first anticipated) with its omnibus initiative. As such, legislative demand for transparency within the supply chain needs to be met. 

“But that's not the main driver for Umbraco,” he continued. “We believe in creating a sustainable company in the broadest understanding of the word, focusing on the people, planet, and profitability of our company because we believe this is the type of company people would like to engage with as part of the community, do business with, and work at.”

As I’ve covered previously, sustainability is a topic many companies are telegraphing to the market. Some are taking authentic actions, others are “greenwashing” for media exposure. I asked Martin how Umbraco isn’t just standing out from the crowd, but leading the way. As you might expect, it comes down to the power of people. 

“I think a main differentiator is that we’re in a great position to influence a large part of the industry through the Umbraco community and our partnerships with some of the world's leading web agencies,” he reflected. “What we create and share can be utilized by a much larger audience than just our own company, and it’s part of our open source DNA to collaborate and share great ideas.”

Much of Umbraco’s current sustainability planning is based on a legacy of interest in this area. The company has long promoted its focus on being more carbon-conscious and taken clear action. Much of its success orbits the early decision to adopt an open source posture and build a strong community of interest.

“When it comes to sustainability, I can’t think of a better foundation for having a positive impact than continuing along the open source path that we have been on from the very beginning of Umbraco’s history,” Martin said.

Sustainability: A team sport with agency players

The Umbraco Sustainability Team was first established in March 2023 as a community-led task force. The collective’s mission was to identify practical ways to reduce the carbon footprint of websites and digital experiences developed on the Umbraco CMS platform. 

As the world’s most widely used open-source .NET CMS, Umbraco has adopted an internal sense of responsibility to reduce its impact on the environment. To expand the message faster and further, Umbraco is collaborating with digital agency partners and its developer community to make a bigger impact. 

To achieve a unified front, the Sustainability Team has assembled a bench of people with solid technical experience in developing professional websites using Umbraco or who have the management expertise to guide clients to more sustainable business choices.

While technical solutions are key to this initiative, both messaging and education are essential pillars. As such, team members work alongside Umbraco HQ to write blogs, present talks, and host webinars on the latest carbon-conscious web design practices. 

Building actionable tools with real-world impact

The inaugural Sustainability Team has already made great strides. I asked Martin what tools or resources from their efforts have really resonated with him thus far.

“My personal favorite out of the team’s contributions to date is the Sustainability Best Practices, where they utilized their experience building web solutions and their knowledge of sustainability to create detailed documentation on how to reduce the carbon footprint of web solutions,” he said. “This documentation is available for anyone to use free of charge, and will not only help reduce emissions from web solutions, but could also reduce hosting costs as more energy-efficient solutions are cheaper to host.”

The Sustainability Team is also developing a package that provides web content editors with sustainability insights within the Umbraco CMS back office. They also provided technical input to the Umbraco Cloud team during the development of its Sustainability Dashboard, which allows web developers to show clients the volume of greenhouse gases generated from running Umbraco Cloud projects – and explain how and where digital operations can be optimized.

Giving these tools to agency partners demonstrates their strategic role in executing Umbraco’s big vision. But as Martin suggests, bringing their team members closer to the initiative is another way that Umbraco is reinforcing the importance of community in developing new ways to expand sustainability. 

“Agencies are getting directly involved by letting their employees participate as members of the team,” he explained. “That alone is testimony that we are doing something right when inviting the people and organizations who are building a business around our products to collaborate with us.”

As someone who votes with my own dollars for products and services that meet specific environmental standards, I understand the importance of branding a company’s participation in goodwill initiatives. It raises awareness for programs and potentially motivates further involvement. 

To that end, I asked Martin how agency partners can communicate their efforts in a positive channel through badging or credentialing. He noted that Umbraco already has a robust Contributing Partner and MVP program, but liked the idea of granulating it further and enabling the partners to highlight their involvement in creating a more sustainable web industry. 

The 2025 Umbraco Sustainability Team members

As Martin noted, the inaugural members of the Sustainability Team have lent tremendous effort over the past two years, illustrating how the Umbraco community has pulled together to share sustainable digital practices with enterprise clients – all with the goal of measurably reducing the web's emissions.

The new members of the 2025 Sustainability Team are:

• Dennis Adolfi, Head of Technology at Danish digital agency Knowit Experience
• Peter Solow, Lead Developer at Knowit Experience
• Imran Haider, Head of Development at London digital agency Cogworks
• Helen Chaplin, Community Services executive at Manchester digital agency Cantarus

Existing members remaining on the Sustainability team include:

• James Hobbs, Head of Technology at Wiltshire digital agency aer Studios
• Rick Butterfield, Lead Software Engineer at Bristol and London agency Wattle
• Thomas Morris, Senior Software Engineer at roadside rescue and insurance company RAC
• Amy Czuba, Account Director at Macclesfield and Cambridge agency Nexer Digital
• Neil Clark, Head of Sustainability at global agency and B-Corp, MSQ Partners (also a member of the BIMA Sustainability Council)

Members of Umbraco’s 2025 Sustainability Team. Source: Umbraco.

In addition to Martin serving as the new Sustainability Team Steward, this year’s Umbraco HQ team members include Karita Kostiainen and Mikulas Tomanka.

What’s next?

According to Martin, Umbraco has seen increased interest in its Impact Reports over the years, both from agencies and end clients. This seems to indicate that more organizations from across the market are seeking guidance – and ways to take action – to create a more sustainable web.

Of course, a big part of realizing this vision is having the right leadership in place. For Martin and Umbraco, that begins with the Sustainability Team. And while the new players have just arrived, he seems ready to hit the ground running. 

“We’ve only just held our first ‘meet and greet’ with the new members of the 2025 Sustainability Team,” he said. “Now the real work begins.”

As Martin explained, it’s important that the Sustainability Team be given latitude in setting goals and establishing relevant benchmarks. He wants to build on the work that’s already been started, bring in new ideas, and ultimately evaluate where the team’s efforts will have the biggest impact.

“The inaugural team created a package for Umbraco that allows people to track and reduce emissions from their solutions,” he said. “I expect that we will likely see additions to that, or maybe even new packages, as we have some skilled engineers on the team who are eager to create new solutions.”

As part of its ongoing efforts to educate the web community, the Umbraco Sustainability Team just hosted a webinar with sustainability champion Mike Berners-Lee on Thursday, May 22nd, at 3 p.m. UK time. 

If you're not familiar with Mike, he's the author of a groundbreaking series of books on sustainability, including A Climate of Truth: Why We Need It and How To Get It, There is No Planet B, and How Bad are Bananas? Mike was also one of the first researchers to calculate that the IT industry’s greenhouse gas emissions were equivalent to those of the aviation industry. 

Why it matters

I personally believe that doing good in the world is good for business – and that it’s indeed possible to be a good steward of the planet while pursuing growth. 

To that end, I asked Martin how the broader sustainability efforts are translating for Umbraco’s prospects. Is the messaging resonating with customers – particularly at a time when certain markets are deprecating ESG and DEI regulations and setting back previous policies to address climate change? And how can partners and the Sustainability Team support a beneficial trajectory?

“During procurement processes, we see that there's already a demand for data about ESG and sustainability efforts from the market,” he said. “Legislation is making it necessary for more and more businesses to better understand and put demands on the suppliers in their supply chains. The team helps us provide just that."

For Martin, the big benefit comes from working openly and collaboratively with agencies and having them well-represented within the makeup of the Sustainability Team. As he pointed out, it ensures that Umbraco gets the necessary “outside-in” perspective to align with what the agencies and end-clients prioritize when looking for new vendors.

Umbraco has always marched to the beat of its own drum, and this is another example of how the company isn’t just motivated to improve digital experiences – but our planet as well. 

I can’t think of a better mission.

Looking for guidance on Umbraco? Talk to an expert.

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