One Planet Sutton

Overview

One Planet Sutton is a major initiative to promote more sustainable lifestyles, council services and local businesses within the London Borough of Sutton.

We are working in partnership with Sutton Council to help cut its own direct impacts on the environment, while seeking ways to support the local community in their efforts to move towards One Planet Living. We want to reach out to the whole of Sutton, starting with our test bed suburb of Hackbridge, and demonstrate a sustainable way of life for all.

Because of the track record of the borough it has been chosen as one of the government's four Big Society Vanguards and the Hackbridge suburb is one of just 17 communities picked to pilot the government's Neighbourhood Planning Front Runner scheme, which gives new powers to local people to help shape the area they live in.

Supporting Sutton Council 
We are supporting Sutton Council in its ambitious programme to integrate the One Planet principles into its operations. We have helped the council in setting up monitoring systems and work plans – the One Planet Sutton Plan is now embedded in the council at all levels and is in the process of being reviewed. Read Sutton's One Planet Action Plan.

Projects:

Community Visions
This Community Engagement project is an exciting opportunity to start working more deeply with the local community around their environment. We will be inspiring community and voluntary groups to get more involved in the local environment, will be mapping the excellent work they already do and encouraging them to share skills. This work will culminate in a set of projects that we will publicise to local people, to raise general awareness and inspire behaviour change. The favourite two of these local environmental projects, as voted for by the public, will be supported by BioRegional’s Community Engagement Officer to help them get off the ground.

Funded by the City Bridge Trust.

Greening Businesses in Hackbridge
We aim to help 45 SMEs to cut their environmental impacts, particularly energy and waste, as well as bringing them together to form collaboration networks. The Greening Businesses in Hackbridge network was launched in February 2011 and we have already started seeing the impact on the businesses we are advising through audits and support in using environmental policies and tools.

Funded by the European Regional Development Fund and delivered by BioRegional on behalf of Sutton Council.

Zero Carbon Hackbridge
We are undertaking research on how this typical London suburb could be retrofitted cost-effectively to become zero carbon. Our objective is to start retrofitting energy efficiency measures now and prepare for the Green Deal roll-out in 2012, and communicate about it. The funding covers three projects: defining a strategy for the whole suburb, researching the potential to use the connection of certain buildings to district heating in this overall strategy, and investigating solutions specific to the social housing sector. In parallel, we need to initiate a delivery programme that will allow actual physical measures to be installed.

Funded by the Mark Leonard Trust, the Ashden Trust and the JJ Charitable Trust.

Retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency
With partners we have retrofitted three near identical social housing properties in Sutton. House 1 has a behaviour change programme only. House 2 incorporates a Decent Homes upgrade (boiler and loft insulation) with a behaviour change programme.  House 3 is a full One Planet makeover, a deep energy retrofit using low impact building materials combined with behaviour change and renewable energy technology (solar) designed to achieve approximately 80% reduction in carbon emissions.

This includes the installation of monitoring equipment that will gather data over a 2-year period and behaviour change workshops that will be delivered up to March 2012. The continued monitoring will allow us to measure and compare the effectiveness of the hard and softmeasures.

Funded by the Technology Strategy Board’s Retrofit for the Future competition. 

You can follow progress on the project blog http://retrofit.oneplanetsutton.org/.

Pay-As-You-Save (PAYS)
BioRegional, Sutton Council and B&Q are trialling the government’s scheme in Sutton, whereby home owners are given interest free loans to make green improvements to their property with the payback instalments being less than the amount saved on bills. Participants also benefit from a 40% grant towards the cost of physical measures. BioRegional carried out the initial energy and cost modelling to assist the engineers in selecting the best measures. We then helped Sutton Council to enrol householders to the scheme and the installations were completed by March 2011. Over 67 householders took part in the PAYS pilot and a total of 12 different measures were installed, costing between £2,400 and £33,000. BioRegional is responsible for monitoring, reporting and evaluating the project. In 2011 we will write a paper  to summarise the lessons learnt and use it to inform the definition of the Green Deal. 

Funded through fee for service revenues from the Technology Strategy Board and Energy Saving Trust

One Planet Experience
A new exhibition will launch in 2011 at the BedZED eco-village in Sutton using the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics to inspire environmental behaviour among Sutton residents. Find out more.

Funded by Defra.

One Planet Food
One Planet Food is helping to make affordable, delicious and nutritious local food more accesible to residents and helping them get fit and healthy through growing their own. The project is run by local environmental charities BioRegional and EcoLocal, Find out more.

You can also find out more at the One Planet Sutton website.