Sustainable living describes a lifestyle that attempts to reduce the use of Earth's natural resources by an individual or society. Its practitioners often attempt to reduce their ecological footprint by altering their home designs and methods of transportation, energy consumption and diet. Its proponents aim to conduct their lives in ways that are consistent with sustainability, naturally balanced, and respectful of humanity's symbiotic relationship with the Earth's natural ecology. The practice and general philosophy of ecological living closely follows the overall principles of sustainable development.
A Sustainable habitat is an ecosystem that produces food and shelter for people and other organisms, without resource depletion and in such a way that no external waste is produced. Thus the habitat can continue into the future tie without external infusions of resources. Such a sustainable habitat may evolve naturally or be produced under the influence of man. A sustainable habitat that is created and designed by human intelligence will mimic nature, if it is to be successful. Everything within it is connected to a complex array of organisms, physical resources, and functions. Organisms from many different biomes can be brought together to fulfill various ecological niches.
A sustainable city, eco-city, or green city is a city designed with consideration for social, economic, environmental impact, and resilient habitat for existing populations, without compromising the ability of future generations to experience the same. The UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 defines sustainable cities as those that are dedicated to achieving green sustainability, social sustainability and economic sustainability. They are committed to doing so by enabling opportunities for all through a design focused on inclusivity as well as maintaining a sustainable economic growth. The focus will also includes minimizing required inputs of energy, water, and food, and drastically reducing waste, output of heat, air pollution – CO2, methane, and water pollution. Richard Register, a visual artist, first coined the term ecocity in his 1987 book Ecocity Berkeley: Building Cities for a Healthy Future, where he offers innovative city planning solutions that would work anywhere. Other leading figures who envisioned sustainable cities are architect Paul F Downton, who later founded the company Ecopolis Pty Ltd, as well as authors Timothy Beatley and Steffen Lehmann, who have written extensively on the subject. The field of industrial ecology is sometimes used in planning these cities.
C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group is a group of 96 cities around the world that represents one twelfth of the world's population and one quarter of the global economy. Created and led by cities, C40 is focused on fighting the climate crisis and driving urban action that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks, while increasing the health, wellbeing and economic opportunities of urban residents.
Gregor Angus Bethune Robertson is a Canadian businessman and a progressive politician, who served as the 39th mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia, from 2008 to 2018. As the longest consecutive serving Mayor in Vancouver's history, Robertson and his team led the creation and implementation of the Greenest City 2020 Action Plan and spearheaded the city's first comprehensive Economic Action Strategy.
WRAP is a British registered charity. It works with businesses, individuals and communities to achieve a circular economy, by helping them reduce waste, develop sustainable products and use resources in an efficient way.
A green-collar worker is a worker who is employed in an environmental sector of the economy. Environmental green-collar workers satisfy the demand for green development. Generally, they implement environmentally conscious design, policy, and technology to improve conservation and sustainability. Formal environmental regulations as well as informal social expectations are pushing many firms to seek professionals with expertise with environmental, energy efficiency, and clean renewable energy issues. They often seek to make their output more sustainable, and thus more favorable to public opinion, governmental regulation, and the Earth's ecology.
A zero-carbon city is a goal of city planners that can be variously defined. In a narrower sense of energy production and use, a zero-carbon city is one that generates as much or more carbon-free sustainable energy as it uses. In a broader sense of managing greenhouse gas emissions, a zero-carbon city is one that reduces its carbon footprint to a minimum by using renewable energy sources; reducing all types of carbon emissions through efficient urban design, technology use and lifestyle changes; and balancing any remaining emissions through carbon sequestration. Since the supply chains of a city stretch far beyond its borders, Princeton University's High Meadows Environmental Institute suggests using a transboundary definition of a net-zero carbon city as "one that has net-zero carbon infrastructure and food provisioning systems".
Sadhu Aufochs Johnston was the City Manager of Vancouver, BC from March 2016 until January 2021 where he was responsible for managing the operations of the City, including oversight of a budget of over $1.6B and over 7,000 staff. As City Manager he spearheaded initiatives to address the growing housing and climate change crisis in Vancouver. He was the Chief Environmental Officer of Chicago and Deputy Chief of Staff to Mayor Richard M. Daley, until he was appointed Deputy City Manager of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in 2009. Johnston previously served as the Executive Director of the Cleveland Green Building Coalition. He is co-author of "The Guide to Greening Cities" published by Island Press in 2013. In 2008, Johnston co-founded the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) and served as the Chair of the Executive Committee of STAR, community sustainability rating system. Johnston served on the selection committee for the Partners for Places Fund, a partnership between USDN and the Funders Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities as well as the Greenest City Fund in partnership with the Vancouver Foundation.
Micro-sustainability is the portion of sustainability centered around small scale environmental measures that ultimately affect the environment through a larger cumulative impact. Micro-sustainability centers on individual efforts, behavior modification, education and creating attitudinal changes, which result in an environmentally conscious individual. Micro-sustainability encourages sustainable changes through "change agents"—individuals who foster positive environmental action locally and inside their sphere of influence. Examples of micro-sustainability include recycling, power saving by turning off unused lights, programming thermostats for efficient use of energy, reducing water usage, changing commuting habits to use less fossil fuels or modifying buying habits to reduce consumption and waste. The emphasis of micro-sustainability is on an individual's actions, rather than organizational or institutional practices at the systemic level. These small local level actions have immediate community benefits if undertaken on a widespread scale and if imitated, they can have a cumulative broad impact.
Bristol was ranked in 2008 as the UK's most sustainable city by the environmental charity Forum for the Future, and in 2015 it received the European Green Capital Award. The Bristol Green Capital initiative is managed by a partnership supported by the City Council. Bristol is home to the environmental charities Sustrans, the Soil Association, and the Centre for Sustainable Energy. The city provides a range of recycling services for household waste.
Environmentally sustainable design is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of ecological sustainability and also aimed at improving the health and comfort of occupants in a building. Sustainable design seeks to reduce negative impacts on the environment, the health and well-being of building occupants, thereby improving building performance. The basic objectives of sustainability are to reduce the consumption of non-renewable resources, minimize waste, and create healthy, productive environments.
A sustainability organization is (1) an organized group of people that aims to advance sustainability and/or (2) those actions of organizing something sustainably. Unlike many business organizations, sustainability organizations are not limited to implementing sustainability strategies which provide them with economic and cultural benefits attained through environmental responsibility. For sustainability organizations, sustainability can also be an end in itself without further justifications.
A circular economy is a model of resource production and consumption in any economy that involves sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling existing materials and products for as long as possible. The concept aims to tackle global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution by emphasizing the design-based implementation of the three base principles of the model. The main three principles required for the transformation to a circular economy are: designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems. CE is defined in contradistinction to the traditional linear economy. The idea and concepts of a circular economy have been studied extensively in academia, business, and government over the past ten years. It has been gaining popularity because it can help to minimize carbon emissions and the consumption of raw materials, open up new market prospects, and, principally, increase the sustainability of consumption.
Green urbanism has been defined as the practice of creating communities beneficial to humans and the environment. According to Timothy Beatley, it is an attempt to shape more sustainable places, communities and lifestyles, and consume less of the world's resources. Urban areas are able to lay the groundwork of how environmentally integrated and sustainable city planning can both provide and improve environmental benefits on the local, national, and international levels. Green urbanism is interdisciplinary, combining the collaboration of landscape architects, engineers, urban planners, ecologists, transport planners, physicists, psychologists, sociologists, economists and other specialists in addition to architects and urban designers.
Sustainable products are products who are either sustainability sourced, manufactured or processed that provide environmental, social and economic benefits while protecting public health and environment over their whole life cycle, from the extraction of raw materials until the final disposal.
Wong Kam-sing, GBS, JP, is a Hong Kong architect and the former Secretary for the Environment, Wong had held a number of public service positions before joining the Government, including the first Chairman of the Environment and Sustainable Development Committee of the Hong Kong Institute of Architects, the Chairman of the Professional Green Building Council and the Vice Chairman of the Hong Kong Green Building Council. He has contributed to the promotion and research of the standards and guidelines for sustainable built environment applicable to the high-density urban environment of Hong Kong.
A circular economy is an alternative way countries manage their resources, in which usage of products in the traditional linear make, use, and dispose method is not implemented. Instead, resources are used for their maximum utility throughout their life cycle and regenerated in a cyclical pattern minimizing waste. They strive to create economic development through environmental and resource protection. The ideas of a circular economy were officially adopted by China in 2002, when the 16th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party legislated it as a national endeavor though the various sustainability initiatives which were implemented in the previous decades starting in 1973. China adopted the circular economy due to the environmental damage and resource depletion that was occurring from going through its industrialization process. China is currently a world leader in the production of resources, where it produces 46% of the world's aluminum, 50% of steel and 60% of cement, while it has consumed more raw materials than all the countries a part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) combined. In 2014, China created 3.2 billion tonnes of industrial solid waste, where 2 billion tonnes were recovered using recycling, incineration, reusing and composting. By 2025, China is anticipated to produce up to one quarter of the world's municipal solid waste.
The European Green Deal, approved in 2020, is a set of policy initiatives by the European Commission with the overarching aim of making the European Union (EU) climate neutral in 2050. The plan is to review each existing law on its climate merits, and also introduce new legislation on the circular economy (CE), building renovation, biodiversity, farming and innovation.
Mumbai Climate Action Plan, a state-government initiative, was established in 2021 to tackle and solve the increasing challenges of climate change. It was officially launched in March 2022. This Planning process was unveiled by the former Environment Minister of Maharashtra, Aaditya Thackeray in September 2021 after Mumbai joined the C40 Cities Network in December 2020. This climate action plan is being drafted by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (MCGM) in assistance with World Resources Institute (WRI), a knowledge partner. This plan will serve as a 30-year roadmap and systematic framework to guide the city, Mumbai, and look climate resilience with mitigation and adaptation strategies through low-carbon, resilient, and inclusive development pathways. Being India's first climate action plan, it is aiming to set net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and green targets for 2050, twenty years before the target set by the Central Government of India at the Glasgow COP summit in 2021. The six key action areas and strategies laid out in this plan are: Sustainable Waste Management, Urban greening & biodiversity, Urban flooding & water resource management, Energy & buildings, Air quality and Sustainable Mobility.
