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Measuring London's impact on the environment
 The
City Limits Report was launched on 10 September 2002 by the
Deputy Mayor of London.
It reveals that each Londoner has an ecological footprint of
6.63 global hectares (gha). That is more than three times
their fair share of the Earth's resources. The biggest
contributors to Londoners' ecological footprints are materials
and wastes, and food. Energy, transport and water are
relatively low contributors. Paper and plastics are the
biggest hitters in the footprint related to materials and
wastes. For example Londoners consume 94 million litres of
mineral water every year. This alone gives rise to 2,260
tonnes of plastic waste.
London is the first major city in the UK to measure its
resource consumption and footprint in such detail. The City
Limits Report sets out all the consumption and waste patterns
of Londoners which contribute to their footprint and suggests
possible scenarios for reducing impact in the future.
It shows that if Londoners continued their current behaviour,
household waste would grow at 3% each year. By 2020,
households would generate 5,672,000 tonnes compared to the
3,400,000 tonnes in 2000. Even if a defined target recycling
rate was achieved, this would result in the disposal of
3,628,000 tonnes - more than what was landfilled in 2000. Even
if higher recycling rates were feasible, the findings suggest
to set more waste reduction as another policy target. Food
transport, electricity and passenger transport are also
examined in future scenarios.
Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, says:
“I warmly welcome this initiative which will be an
important contribution to the work of the Greater London
Authority. Analysing resource flows and setting out London’s
ecological footprint will provide a crucial baseline context
for the development of my strategies. This is ground- breaking
work and I am happy that the GLA is contributing to the study.
My vision is for London to become an exemplary sustainable
world city. Ecological footprinting is a vital tool that we
can use to measure our progress towards achieving a
sustainable future”.
The City Limits initiative has been launched in September
2002. The dedicated web site allows downloading the full
report of the study and the data files. It also includes an
interactive lifestyle tool.
More information
Giving food for thought to Sonoma County’s inhabitants
To raise public awareness, to initiate questioning and debates,
to bring about cross-pollinating ideas, to inspire hands-on
action in a view to create social change at the community
level were also the objective of the Sonoma County's
Ecological Footprint Project in the US.
Sonoma County's Project included 4 phases :
- to calculate the County's per capita
footprint,
- to have results reviewed by local
scientists and community leaders,
- to write and distribute a report,
- to hold a conference to discuss the
results and their applications.
75 people attended the launching of the
project in November 2001. The calculation was completed in
February, focus groups of scientists and community leaders met
in March, and the conference was held in May.
The main objectives of the project are:
- to define sustainability goals in
specific terms,
- to measure the community's progress,
- to create strategies for
accelerating progress,
- to educate and inspire community
action toward building a sustainable future.
During 3-hour experiential workshop introducing sustainability
concepts & tools, the County invites participants to explore
in which ways they can use these tools to shift to more
sustainable lifestyles. Through these interactive workshops,
participants are encouraged to identify and address
psychological and sociological factors that influence
behaviour and to translate their visions into global,
community and personal proposals for change.
Since July 2000, students, educators, seniors, business owners,
high-tech employees, environmentalists, activists, elected
officials, and community leaders--hundreds of people have been
participating in workshops. Some participants have started
their own workshops, and have joined the training program to
become presenters.
The County also organised a training program for new workshop
presenters and an evaluation, research and design process to
keep work effective and take advantage of innovative work from
around the world.
More information:
Benchmarking between Dutch municipalities
 "De
Mondiale Voetafdruk" project (the World Footprint) was
developed in 8 Dutch cities in 2000 and 2001. This project
funded by the national and some provincial authorities helped
those cities to organise touring exhibitions, to develop a web
site, to distribute handouts and folders, to organise
discussion meetings, and to open debates in special evening
meetings or in schools. The automatic footprint calculator
available on the web site also allowed the organisers to
compile data's and compare the average footprints registered
from various cities.
Those events gave the impulse to other initiatives developed
by municipalities, NGO's as well as companies. The Nationale
Jongerenraad voor Milieu en Ontwikkeling (National Youth
Council For Environment and Development) for instance, started
a positive bet with Politicians on the reduction of their
respective ecological footprints.
More information:
Return to
"Raising awareness on the impact of lifestyles"
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