Did you watch David Attenborough’s ‘Climate Change – the facts’ earlier this month? Alongside Greta Thunberg’s visit to the UK and the Extinction Rebellion protests, we’ve seen a recent boom in UK media coverage of climate change - more than 1.5k mentions in April alone.

As this continues to happen, we can expect to see more demand from the public for businesses and other organisations to be operating in a way that tackles climate change. And what’s more, we know that operating in a more sustainable way can drive innovation, competitiveness and efficiency.

Getting started on sustainability

Getting started on sustainability can be daunting, but there are frameworks out there that can help guide your response.

One of these is our sustainability framework, One Planet Living. One Planet Living is Bioregional’s vision of a world where we can live happily within the Earth’s resources, and a straightforward framework to achieve this.

It’s been used by organisations across the world to help plan, deliver and communicate their sustainability efforts. With its ten simple principles from health and happiness to zero carbon energy, One Planet Living creates joined-up sustainability solutions that are easy for people to get onboard with.

Using the One Planet Living framework

The idea behind One Planet Living framework is that you use the ten principles to structure a sustainability action plan – known as a One Planet Action Plan.

This process is guided by our Goals and Guidance, which provide advice and ideas on the goals, actions, targets and indicators that you could set under each principle.

Launched in 2003, One Planet Living has been used by organisations across the world. We have seen it help organisations radically cut carbon emissions and achieve wider major environmental, economic and social benefits in billions of dollars' worth of real estate, as well as towns and cities, large and small businesses, schools and universities.

Its simplicity makes it highly flexible and it can work for any size of business – small or large.

Creating innovation using One Planet Living

The One Planet Living framework helps to encourage innovation through:

• Embracing ‘systems thinking’ and highlighting how many aspects of sustainability are interlinked
• Being responsive to change – as a highly flexible framework it can easily be adapted as an organisation progresses and supports innovative thinking
• A holistic approach to sustainability that creates space for teamwork and collaboration by drawing on expertise across an organisation
• Providing ownership of change and capturing hearts as well as minds – One Planet Living doesn’t say ‘you have to do this’ but it does say ‘you can be part of the solution’!
• Using the OnePlanet.com platform, which helps organisations monitor and showcase their progress.

If you’re an SME based in Oxfordshire, come along to our One Planet Living training run by Oxfordshire Greentech and Cherwell District Council on 24 May at the Oxford Town Hall

What will you learn?

The ten One Planet Living Principles will be introduced as a simple and flexible solution to developing sustainability strategies. Compelling case studies will be used to explore the skills and approaches necessary to make change happen.

At the end of the morning you will have the outline of a sustainability strategy in place and have the opportunity to discuss the next steps with Bioregional’s experts.

Please note that the workshop is part-funded by European Regional Development Funded (ERDF) and is available to eligible SME applicants as part of phase 2 of the Innovation Support for Business (ISfB) programme.