Our Approach

Our approach

We aim to lead the way to one planet living through practical demonstration and by sharing our experience. We:

• invent and deliver sustainable products, services and production systems,
• initiate and guide the development of sustainable communities and businesses,
• help and inspire others to learn from our experience through consultancy, education and policy.

Our process

Based on more than 15 years’ experience, we have developed a tried and tested way of meeting our needs within environmental limits, that can be described as:

Measuring > Solving > Delivering > Inspiring.

We have applied this to develop solutions at different scales, from transforming entire cities to helping individuals.

Measure the impacts
We use scientific techniques to quantify environmental impacts and identify opportunities to make significant reductions in all areas of our footprint.

Devise solutions
We use tools such as the ten principles of one planet living to devise bioregional solutions and plan the actions we need to take to achieve one planet living.

Deliver sustainability
We set up partnerships and new enterprises to deliver our practical sustainability solutions.

Inspire others
We inspire and assist others to adopt our solutions, by providing a range of services and communicating the lessons of our practical projects.

Ecological footprinting

Ecological footprinting is one of the core tools that we use in our approach. The ecological footprint represents the amount of biologically productive land and sea area needed to regenerate the resources a human population consumes and to absorb and render harmless the corresponding waste. Using this assessment, it is possible to estimate how much of the earth (or how many planet earths) it would take to support humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle.

For example, if everyone in the world lived an average UK lifestyle, we would need three planets to support us.

In 2005, the globally available biocapacity was 2.1 global hectares per person. The global Ecological Footprint in 2005 was 2.7 global hectares per person.

As WWF's Living Planet Report explains: "Humanity's footprint first exceeded the earth's total biocapacity in the 1980s; this overshoot has been increasing since then. In 2005, demand was 30 percent greater than supply."

Find out more about ecological footprinting.