Welcome to the Sustainable Communities portal, which is provided in the context of the internationally agreed UN Sustainability Goals.
Realising these goals depends in part on inter-governmental agreements and actions, partly on national governmental policies and programmes, but partly also on the actions taken by individuals in their day-to-day life that help to make up Sustainable Communities. These are generally described as when:
the needs of people to be safe, healthy and happy can be met, without damaging the environment or compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs
The purpose of this portal is to enable individuals to assess the extent to which their lifestyle aligns with the above definition. It will be reset annually so that individuals can re-assess the sustainability impact of any changes in their circumstances year-on-year.
The generally recognised aspects of our personal contribution to community sustainability is reflected by the 10 icons below, each of which clicks through to a very brief questionnaire. Please read the the guidance notes before starting.
The portal also provides links to a wide range of educational, training and information sources relating to sustainability. Separately, the portal also provides a tool to help Local Authorities and Central Government to understand progress towards national and local sustainability, and the impact of the policies and measures they have in place.
GUIDANCE NOTES ON COMPLETING THE 10 QUESTIONNAIRES BELOW:
Please answer all questions as accurately as you can to provide the truest possible picture.
Please complete only one input per household, and only input once in each calendar year; each questionnaire asks for very limited personal information which enables all inputs to be analysed but does not enable you to be identified.
Please only select one of the 4 options provided for each question. Of the 4 possible answers to each question, answer 1 is the least sustainable, with answers 2 & 3 showing step-by-step improvements up to answer 4 which is the most sustainable.
Don’t be disheartened if many of your answers today are 1s & 2s; answers 3 & 4 illustrate the improvements that can be made when you are ready to make them.