Assessing the One Planet Sutton Sustainability Strategy
| Sponsor: | London Borough of Sutton |  |
| Sponsor Liaison: | Andrea Crump & Katrina Lloyd | |
| Student Team: |
Omran Alomran |
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| Abstract: | The London Borough of Sutton is striving to become the most sustainable borough in the city. After 8 years of using the One Planet Living sustainability framework, Sutton council staff believe now is the time to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this strategy and seek achievable improvements. Case studies of regions around the United Kingdom displaying exemplary efforts of sustainable development allowed us to create a set of recommendations for Sutton’s future sustainability strategy including suggested targets, key performance indicators, and benchmarking techniques. | |
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Executive Summary
If everyone in the world lived as we did in Sutton, we would need almost three planets’ worth of resources to maintain our lifestyle (our ecological footprint). This is unsustainable, and expensive. We need to change this and reduce our footprint to a one planet level (Sutton Council, n.d.).
The London Borough of Sutton is striving to become the most sustainable borough in the city. After 8 years of using the One Planet Living sustainability framework developed by Bioregional, Sutton council staff believe now is the time to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this strategy and seek achievable improvements.
Through extensive interviews with 16 employees from Sutton who are in charge of monitoring and reporting on the One Planet Sutton targets, we found that few staff members had issues with the strategy; however, a similar number of staff members found the sustainability strategy irrelevant, as the same jobs have existed for years and the only benefit to the strategy is the organisation of reporting. The interviewed staff members commonly felt that the targets set by Bioregional are too ambitious for the borough to achieve. Conversely, some interviewees felt that these arduous targets drove them to work harder— yet many employees felt disheartened, knowing they will never achieve the set targets with the current resources available to Sutton.
Case studies of regions around the United Kingdom displaying exemplary efforts of sustainable development allowed us to create a set of recommendations for Sutton’s future sustainability strategy including suggested targets, key performance indicators, and benchmarking techniques.
The development of sustainable infrastructure is an essential element of sustainable development; focusing on this often requires significant funding, but brings long lasting, effective results. One solution to the expensive task of developing sustainable infrastructure is to develop policies that requires green procurement and construction practices, which generates revenue for the borough, outsources costs, and ensures sustainable development for the foreseeable future. Education of sustainability ensures a sustainable future; we recommend the borough makes strong efforts to ensure all staff are aware of the sustainability strategy in place.
Community involvement and partnering with external organisations increases productivity and saves resources. We recommend the borough seek new partnerships for sustainability efforts. Separating council-oriented targets from resident-oriented targets allows the council to act as a leader in sustainable efforts for the residents. Key Performance Indicators and actions effectively measure and achieve targets. Therefore, we recommend the borough adopts broader targets, using KPIs to track progress and performing actions to achieve this progress. Quantifying qualitative target progress subjectively on a scale from 1-10 allows for effective measurement of otherwise unmeasurable targets.