Action Guides for Sustainable Living
Inspiring ways to advance sustainable living in communities
Coming together with others to take meaningful action builds connection, strengthens communities and creates lasting change. Our Action Guides help neighbours, workplaces and organizations discover practical, inspiring ways to make sustainable living part of everyday life.
Why It Matters
You love your community and want to make life better in tangible ways, starting right where you are. Connecting with others, exploring new ideas, getting your hands dirty, celebrating milestones, nurturing what matters and tackling meaningful challenges together are all ways these guides help you embrace more sustainable and nourishing ways of living.
Our neighbourhoods, workplaces and seniors homes are just some of the places to come together around shared values, life transitions and meaningful challenges. These Action Guides help people learn, collaborate and take practical action to advance sustainable living in our everyday lives.
What You'll Find Inside
Each guide includes hundreds of accessible, evidence-based actions that help people live more sustainably in the places where they live, work and gather.
You can explore high-impact opportunities from how we eat and get around to how we live in our homes, the things we buy and the ways we strengthen our communities.
Built on the latest science and research, the guides also include tools to help you identify community strengths, engage others, build support and create lasting change.
Most of all, they’re designed to make sustainable living practical, empowering – and fun.
You can explore high-impact opportunities from how we eat and get around to how we live in our homes, the things we buy and the ways we strengthen our communities.
Built on the latest science and research, the guides also include tools to help you identify community strengths, engage others, build support and create lasting change.
Most of all, they’re designed to make sustainable living practical, empowering – and fun.
Our action guides help you:
Understand sustainable living.
Learn what sustainable living means, and which everyday actions make the biggest difference. Sustainable living is about meeting everyone's needs and aspirations in ways that help both people and the Earth's living systems thrive.
Take action where it matters most.
Focus your energy on the actions with the greatest potential to reduce climate and ecological impacts while supporting fair, healthy and meaningful lives for all.
Create change together.
You may already be making sustainable choices in your own life; our guides help you build on those efforts by inviting friends, neighbours, coworkers and your wider community to join you. Because lasting change happens together.
Sample action packages include:
- Good Stuff: Cut clutter and create connection through mindful consumption choices, less waste and more sharing.
- Next-Level Food: Fuel healthy eating practices that are better for the planet through plant-rich meals, local food and less food waste.
- On the Move: Move smarter by rethinking how we get around, commuting efficiently and travelling with a lighter footprint.
- Life Changes: Adopt sustainable behaviours during times of transition, and celebrate milestones in low-impact ways.
- Cultivating Connection: Build a fairer, more inclusive community inspired by both new and traditional living practices.
- Big Wins: Support long-term choices that have the greatest impact on reducing our ecological and climate footprints.
Choose the Guide That's Right for You
Neighbourhood Guide for Sustainable Living
Make a difference where you live by bringing neighbours together around fun, practical sustainable living actions. Explore high-impact big wins, group initiatives and opportunities to spark local change through small grants. Produced by OneEarth Living with Vancity and RECYC-QUÉBEC.
Workplaces Guide for Sustainable Living
Help your workplace champion sustainable living through workplace culture, staff engagement and practical incentives. This guide includes seven action packages, including plant-rich food, greener commutes and other everyday actions. Produced by OneEarth Living with RECYC-QUÉBEC.
Seniors Home Guide for Sustainable Living
Advance sustainable everyday living in seniors homes through operations, resident engagement and community building. This guide includes actions for care homes, independent living facilities, and 55+ strata buildings, along with real-world examples. Produced by OneEarth Living with the District of Saanich.
Sustainable Lifestyles: Options and Opportunities
Explore accessible actions and tools that create more sustainable lifestyles in communities and workplaces. Discover ideas and approaches you can adapt to your own context. Produced by OneEarth Living with the United Nations Environment Programme.
BONUS! ‘Live Net Zero’ 10-Minute Quiz for Canadians
Discover your household’s top climate priority, learn which actions make the biggest impact and get a personalized pathway to living net zero. Produced by OneEarth Living with Canadian Geographic.
OPEN Technologies and Vancity Credit Union
Contextualize Consumer Choices
OPEN Technologies, a software company helping people that shape our cities make pro-climate decisions, and Vancity, Canada’s largest credit union, expected that people who own a heat pump would likely do so because they are motivated ‘by the planet.’
A set of questions designed to apply the Motivations was added to a survey of 750 homeowners in Southwest BC. Surprisingly, the survey data showed that people motivated by ‘the planet’ are actually LESS likely to own a heat pump. The 7% of the BC population with a ‘Work Hard, Live Large’ Motivation are more than twice as likely to own a heat pump. These are people motivated by personal comfort and product performance.
This may be explained by the strong correlation between heat pumps and the type of home that ‘Work Hard Live Large’ are more likely to occupy: suburban, single-family detached homes built after 2000. With clarity that structural factors are more important drivers of heat pump adoption than homeowners being motivated ‘by the planet’, OPEN, in their public research report ‘Stuck’ (2022), could confidently call on policymakers to overcome the barriers that stand in the way for homeowners.
Global Outdoor Products Brand
Identify Growth Opportunities
An American manufacturer of outdoor products (ice chests, stainless-steel drinkware and soft coolers) expanding into Canada at the same time the team was developing a circular economy strategy. The motivations framework helped size and illuminate North American growth segments for their circular strategy. A set of questions designed to apply the motivations was added to a survey of Canadian and US customers and potential customers. Survey analysis identified the estimated percentages across the 7 motivations.
Interest in circular programs (such as recommerce and product take back) was measured for each of the segments. The Shop Style & Social segment represents the biggest growth opportunity for the brand (41% of audience in Canada, 37% of the audience in the US) but they are not currently interested in circular programs. The insights and data tell us it’s likely that people with a Shop Style & Social motivation need to see others engaging in circular programs to feel it's ‘the norm’ or the trendy thing to do. While Eco-Trends is a smaller % of the audience, it was recommended that the brand consider first engaging people with an Eco-Trends motivation to participate in its circular programs. They in turn, will influence the larger Shop Style & Social segment.
Flavour Harvest
Reach New Customers
The Canadian Centre for Food and the Environment worked together with OneEarth Living to see how the Motivations overlaid with the customer base of a Toronto-based grocery store chain - The Sweet Potato is one of the largest suppliers of local, organic food in Ontario.
They wanted to reach people beyond their existing core customers, helping change what they eat and how they shop. We applied the segmentation to the Sweet Potato customer base and 35% had the Eco-Trends motivation (almost double the general population). The Eco-Trends segment, is motivated to reduce their environmental impact, to be a good example to others in their shopping choices (i.e., through social media sharing) and to ‘buy local.’ However people with this motivation need to be engaged with simple & positive messages.
They focused in on mothers with an Eco-trends motivation, and encourage the uptake of organic carrots through an engaging campaign which included in-store tastings and a charismatic bunny. A free, two day event at The Sweet Potato store was designed to do the heavy lifting of delighting and educating parents and children together.
The Ethical Chair, Revivify with Share Reuse Repair Initiative
Clarify Target Market
The Ethical Chair is a concept-stage program of Revivify that sells reclaimed and upcycled pre-owned furniture. Their mission is to reduce furniture going to landfill while creating jobs for refugees. The Ethical Chair team tested ‘eco-good’ vs. ‘social good’ messages (reduce waste to landfill vs. support local repair jobs) via a method called an A/B test to gauge which was most compelling to their audience. They tested the two messages on Instagram, measuring the number of “likes” and “follows”.
When the Ethical Chair team originally considered the 7 motivations they weren’t sure if their target market would be Eco-Trends or Waste Not, Want Not. By doing the A/B test, they learned and gained confidence that their target is those with an Eco-Trends motivation. The test saw strong “likes” for both social good and eco-good (57% vs. 43%) and both are core values and attributes of the Ethical Chair brand. These findings also reinforced the importance of messaging about both eco good and social good in branded content.
Järki Särki (Sitra case study)
Expand Customer Base
With very few domestic fish options on the market in Finland, a food waste entrepreneur used the motivations to seize new market opportunities for the Jarki Sarki brand. Järki Särki brand is a Finnish fish delicacy made of what’s called ‘roach’ fish, an invasive species that degrades the water quality of lakes. Normally, it would be wasted.
Järki Särki team was part of The Sitra Smart Everyday Development Program which taught Finnish entrepreneurs how to apply Sitra’s segmentation to their sustainable business idea. They were first asked to compare the motivations to their customers. Then they were asked to identify their potential customers as well as the reasons they would be interested in the product. Through the lens of the motivations, the team understood that Finns are motivated to buy Järki Särki for different reasons:
- Preference for domestically produced products
- To reduce food waste
- Shifting their diet from red meat to more sustainable alternatives
And that their early adopters likely represented only 9% of Finns. With some product design and messaging changes, the brand could reach two more motivations (53% of Finns). With the motivations insight informing the brand story, the team was able to expand distribution to thousands of stores in Finland. In the first year of the re-brand, sales grew +50%. In the second year, +30%.
Guelph-Wellington Waste Diversion
Improve Sorting and Organic Waste Diversion
Guelph-Wellington Local Government
Based on the insight from the Motivations study that Shop, Style & Social is the main motivation in Guelph-Wellington, the local government adopted a pro-social approach approach which greatly improved sorting and organic waste diversion. They placed gold stars on the compost bins of residents with exemplary food scrap sorting practices, to signal to neighbours who has a “clean bin.” and paired this with a social media campaign and a celebratory community dinner.
The Guelph Box
Clarify Create Buzz for Upcycled Ingridients
The Guelph Box project harnessed pro-social motivations by offering an innovative “upcycled food box” during the holidays, packed with locally sourced ingredients that might otherwise have been tossed. A shareable social media campaign resonated with consumers and led to nearly 100 boxes sold, prompting an additional run in March.
the number of “likes” and “follows”.
Engage with us
These guides are living resources, and we'd love to hear how you're using them. Share your experiences, ideas and feedback – and help inspire even more people to embrace sustainable living. We’d love to hear from you at OneEarthLiving.org/contact-us.
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