What Is Lighter Footprint?

Lighter footprint represents the practice and process of limiting one’s overall environmental impacts that result from day-to-day behaviour. This concept is applicable for individuals, businesses, municipalities and nations. These environmental impacts can include: resources used (e.g. energy, food, water etc.), the amount of waste generated, the amount of greenhouse gases emitted, and more. This idea of measuring and limiting our individual and collective environmental impacts is based off the ecological footprint concept, which was developed by Dr. William E. Rees in 1992 right here in Vancouver!

Ecological footprint is defined as:

an estimate of the physical area of productive land and water ecosystems that an individual, population or activity requires to produce all the bio-resources it consumes and to absorb the carbon waste it generates, using prevailing technology and resource management practices (Timmer & Timmer, 2017). 

Currently, we are in an ecological overshoot, meaning our global use of resources is beyond the regenerative capacities of the planet. In other words, every year, we are using more natural resources than the earth can provide. Metro Vancouver’s ecological footprint has been estimated at 2,352,627 global hectares, or 4.2 gha per person, meaning if everyone on earth lived like Vancouverites, we would need 2 planets to sustain our lifestyles (Moore & Rees, 2013). If Metro Vancouver was to reach “one planet living” Vancouverites would need to reduce their ecological footprints by 50% (Timmer & Timmer, 2017).

Keeping in line with this challenge, the first ever Envirolab explored the challenges and opportunities within Metro Vancouver relating to limiting individual, corporate, and municipal footprints. By inviting a collection of experts in the fields of lighter footprint, circular and sharing economies, sustainable business models, and more, equipped our participants to design projects, actions, and/or products that will help bring Metro Vancouver closer towards a one planet goal.

Key questions explored:

• How do we create systems that mobilize individual behavioural change?
• What changes need to be made between business, local governments and other levels of government for systemic change?
• How do we encourage sustainable practices for individuals and businesses in a way that is rooted in equity, affordability and accessibility?

The final Public Pitch Event took place on Wednesday, December 4th, 2019.

STEERING COMMITTEE

PARTNERS

This program wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of:

Sources

Moore, J., and Rees, W., E. (2013). Getting to One Planet Living. State of the World, Island Press, Washington D.C.
Timmer, V. and D. Timmer. (2017). Lighter Footprint Research Report. One Earth: Vancouver, Canada.