What is Sustainability?

There are many definitions of the terms sustainability and sustainable development and they have become overused and often misunderstood.

At its heart, ‘sustainability’ is a simple idea – to ensure a better quality of life for everyone, now and importantly for generations to come (i.e. our children, grandchildren and their children)

The simple fact is that today we are living well beyond Planet Earth’s means of supporting our activities. The rate at which we are denuding the planet of resources, increases concentrations of global warming gases and pumps pollutants into the air, water and earth. Quite simply our current way of living is not sustainable over the long term!

We have taken the term sustainability to mean reducing the demands, we as a town place on the planet – or as it is sometimes called reducing our ‘ecological footprint’. This means that as a town, we aim to reduce the amount of CO2 and other pollutants that we emit from heating our homes, driving our cars etc. and water and other precious resources that we waste.

In time we hope to set targets for specific reductions and we will publish these as we move forward and we would welcome any comments that anybody has.  For now we will move forward with specific initiatives that will reduce our footprint!

In 1987, the World Commission on Environment and Development developed a definition of sustainability that was included in its findings, which became known as the Brundtland Report.

It stated that: Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.