Take Action
Join us in advancing sustainable living solutions
We all have a role to play. From policy makers to business to communities to people, we work together to mainstream low-impact everyday living.
This is a journey. Begin here or take your actions to the next level.
What can you do? Get inspired by exploring packages below that fit your roles. We point to practical resources and tools from OneEarth Living and from other sites. Feel welcome to share these resources with others.
In Canada? Enter the Live Net Zero Challenge. Win up to $10,000 in cash prizes! Learn more below.
Sustainable Living Leader
You are working day in and day out on the challenge and opportunity of sustainable living. The world is increasingly leaning on you for guidance on how to rapidly build a good life for all within the Earth’s means.
Resources from OneEarth Living, with partners:
- Beacon for Sustainable Living – an initiative led by OneEarth Living and Hot or Cool to support sustainable living leaders with fresh approaches and solutions.
- Fostering and Communicating Sustainable Lifestyles – a guide to build engagement campaigns that advance sustainable ways of living – with 16 cases from around the world.
Other resources:
- Sustainable Lifestyles and Education Programme – the UN One Planet Network’s programme to implement Sustainable Development Goal 12 and foster uptake of sustainable lifestyles as the norm through global partners, also see this hub.
- Shift 1.5 Network – a community of practice accelerating the adoption of a sustainable “good life” through collective local action in different countries, guided by Finnish SITRA methods.
Let us know what you find useful. Share with others and send us your suggestions at OneEarthLiving.org/contact-us
Policymaker
You create the conditions for people to live sustainable lives. You take on critical roles from establishing policies and regulation, to leading by example, to driving innovation, to outreach. As a national government or regional policymaker, you set the direction for others to follow.
Resources from OneEarth Living, with partners:
- EU Policy Pathways to 1.5 Degree Lifestyles – resources for European Union policymakers to communicate and implement policies for sustainable lifestyles.
- Motivations for Lighter Living Action – exploring the “why” behind sustainable lifestyles and behaviours that can guide policy and citizen engagement.
Other resources:
- 1.5 Degree Lifestyles: Targets and Options for Reducing Lifestyle Carbon Footprints – a guide for national governments to meet the Paris climate goals through contributions from lifestyle changes.
- Enabling Sustainable Lifestyles in a Climate Emergency – a policy brief offering insights on what forces shape our lifestyles and how to shape our values and norms to economic factors and government regulations, underpinned by the physical infrastructure within which we live.
- Sustainable LIfestyles and Education Hub: Policy Guidance – guidance for policymakers to create enabling environments for sustainability learning and make sustainable lifestyles a common norm.
Let us know what you find useful. Share with others and send us your suggestions at OneEarthLiving.org/contact-us
City
You have an outsized influence on shaping household demand and lifestyles. Most people around the world live in cities, and urban consumption contributes greatly to climate, pollution and resource challenges. As urban stakeholders, you can help to meet citizens’ needs and aspirations in sustainable and equitable ways.
Resources from OneEarth Living, with partners:
- Beacon for Sustainable Living: Cities – find policy guidance, resources and examples on how cities are advancing sustainable living.
- Sustainable Consumption Toolkit – a toolkit to advance sustainable consumption, introducing key concepts and suggested initiatives and implementation strategies; created for the Urban Sustainability Directors Network.
Other resources:
- C40 Cities Spotlight on: Sustainable Consumption – a resource on how your city can tackle consumption-based emissions and reap rewards with useful tools, resources and examples.
- BCIT Centre for Ecocities – support for the evolution of ecocities worldwide through tools, metrics, expert planning and policy advice, training and other services for cities.
- Envisioning 1.5-Degree Lifestyles: Policies for Low-Carbon Cities in 2030 – a project exploring the concept of “1.5 degree lifestyles” at the city level including in Brazil, India, Japan, South Africa and Thailand. More resources here.
Let us know what you find useful. Share with others and send us your suggestions at OneEarthLiving.org/contact-us
Business and Marketing
As a business leader, entrepreneur, or sales and marketing professional, you play a key role. You shape aspirations and consumer demand, and help develop and mainstream the goods and services for sustainable living.
Resources from OneEarth Living, with partners:
- Motivations for Lighter Living Action – find out the “why” behind sustainable lifestyles and behaviours and use this tool for business planning, marketing, and sustainable/circular innovation aimed at mainstreaming lighter living actions.
Other resources:
- World Business Council on Sustainable Development: Sustainable Lifestyles – a program to enable and inspire the marketing, products, infrastructure, technology, business models, behaviours and aspirations required to make sustainable living possible and desirable.
- SHIFT framework and workbook – a set of tools for fostering ecologically sustainable consumer behaviour by shaping marketing and innovation.
- Talk the Walk: Advancing Lifestyles through Marketing and Communications
- Sustainable Lifestyles Frontier Group – an initiative that aims to seize today’s opportunity for businesses to enable sustainable lifestyles globally.
Let us know what you find useful. Share with others and send us your suggestions at OneEarthLiving.org/contact-us
Arts and Design
As a creative, you strive to engage us fully as human beings. You enchant us with beauty. You guide our attention. You help us express our emotions, struggles and stories. You reimagine our world and what sustainable living is and can be. You redesign and move us away from harmful consumer cultures. You help us find vibrant, creative ways forward.
Resources from OneEarth Living, with partners:
- Beacon for Sustainable Living: Imagining Futures – a program engaging creatives to imagine compelling visions of sustainable living, with examples and resources to inspire.
- Fostering and Communicating Sustainable Lifestyles – a guide to build engagement campaigns that advance sustainable ways of living – with 16 cases from around the world.
Other resources:
- Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability – book and videos: “Re-engineering cultures to create a sustainable civilization intro video (4 min) and book overview (part 1– 9 min; part 2 – 10 min).
- Indigenous cultures as central to sustainability – including in the UN Sustainable Development Goals and environmental stewardship.
- Dive Into Intangible Cultural Heritage! – a database of cultural practices and expressions from around the world that can lead the way to sustainability.
- Responsible for inspirational projects such as the algae dome and open source CNC bee hives, Space10 – IKEA’s research and design lab, responsible for inspirational projects such as the algae dome and open source CNC bee hives.
- Looking at the built environment in new ways, check out some of the work coming out of Ryerson’s Ecological Design Lab – innovative work looking at the built environment in new ways.
Let us know what you find useful. Share with others and send us your suggestions at OneEarthLiving.org/contact-us
Funder
You are investing in sustainable living or are ready to tap into this area with high potential impact. You want to learn and are open to experimenting and collaborating. There is a huge demand to fund climate and nature solutions that enable equitable behaviour change.
Resources from OneEarth Living, with partners:
- Fair Earth Living Funder Collaborative – a learning community hosted by OneEarth Living and MakeWay of both committed and curious funders in Canada enabling sustainable living.
Other resources:
- Funder Network for Sustainable Living – a network facilitated by the Hot or Cool Institute bringing together funders interested and engaged in funding sustainable living solutions.
- KR Foundation Sustainable Behaviour programme – an example of a funder programme addressing the root causes of climate change and environmental degradation by mainstreaming low-emission living.
Let us know what you find useful. Share with others and send us your suggestions at OneEarthLiving.org/contact-us
Community Champion
You work in your community to make lives better. You’re a champion in your own way or combine different approaches – getting your hands dirty, connecting people, exploring issues, resisting, nurturing, communicating. You champion the needs and aspirations of your community and take action to make sustainable living happen.
Resources from OneEarth Living, with partners:
- Sustainable Lifestyles: Options and Opportunities – examples of proven actions creating and inspiring more sustainable lifestyles in a city / community or in a workplace.
- Lighter Living Action Pack for Neighbourhoods – a toolkit for making a difference where you live through high-impact actions you can take by yourself, with a few others or with your neighbourhood.
- Co-Creating Sustainable Ways of Living: 17 Stories of On-the-Ground Innovations – inspiration from 17 projects investigating and testing pathways to sustainable living in the Global South.
Other resources:
- UNESCO Green Citizens – profiling examples of impactful local and international initiatives drawing on the energy and determination of citizens bringing positive change.
- Transition Network – a movement of communities coming together to reimagine and rebuild our world with resources and examples.
Let us know what you find useful. Share with others and send us your suggestions at OneEarthLiving.org/contact-us
Youth
You are young, concerned, fired-up and ambitious. You ask questions and embrace alternatives. You make sustainability a part of your daily life. You are experimenting with how to live. You are making urgent demands to politicians and decision makers to take action. You are learning and building skills.
Resources from OneEarth Living, with partners:
- Sustainable Lifestyles: Options and Opportunities – a sample of proven actions creating and inspiring more sustainable lifestyles in a city / community or in a workplace.
- Lighter Living Action Pack for Neighbourhoods – a toolkit for making a difference where you live and high-impact actions you can take by yourself, with a few others or with your neighbourhood.
- Global Survey on Sustainable Lifestyles – a survey of 8,000 young adults from 20 countries that reflects that young people want to be a force for change and create their own vision of sustainable development, want local options they can include in their daily lives, need to build trust for participation, and engage in research and education for sustainable lifestyles.
Other resources:
- Question Consumption – a series of blogs written by youth thinking creatively about how to reduce and shift consumption, in ways that benefit personal well-being and the environment.
- Intersectional Environmentalist – a climate justice collective radically imagining a more equitable and diverse future of environmentalism.
- YouthXChange Initiative – an initiative created by UN Environment and UNESCO to promote sustainable lifestyles among youth (aged 15-24) through education, dialogue, awareness-raising and capacity-building including a series of guidebooks on climate and lifestyles, biodiversity and lifestyles, and green skills and lifestyles.
- Regeneration 2030 – a youth movement for sustainability in the Nordic and Baltic Regions also focused on consumption and lifestyles.
- Fridays for Future – a youth-led and -organised movement to protest against the lack of action on the climate crisis.
Let us know what you find useful. Share with others and send us your suggestions at OneEarthLiving.org/contact-us
Individual / Household
You are doing your part. You align your choices and daily practices to lessen your impact on the environment. You want to make a difference. You join forces with others. You want to use your talents, your voice, your skills and your way of living for climate, equity and nature.
Resources from OneEarth Living, with partners:
- Sustainable Lifestyles: Options and Opportunities – a sample of proven actions creating and inspiring more sustainable lifestyles in a city / community or in a workplace across food, mobility, housing, goods, leisure and general sustainable living areas.
- Neighbourhood Action for Lighter Living – a toolkit for making a different where you live and high-impact actions you can take by yourself, with a few others or with your neighbourhood.
Other resources:
- Changemaker Quiz – a quiz by the Story of Stuff that explores how you show up in the world and what role you can play in your community for change.
- Footprint calculator and Earth Overshoot Day solutions by the Global Footprint Network to assess your impact on the environment and be part of the #MovetheDate campaign to turn natural resource consumption trends towards improving the quality of life for all people and for the planet. See the Lighter Footprint App for British Columbia based calculator and solutions.
- Top 10 things you can do to stop climate change – David Suzuki Foundation in Canada – a powerful list of big actions individuals can take.
- Anatomy of Action – a handy action set for everyday sustainable living that identifies the top-level changes any individual can make to support sustainability.
- Good Life Goals – 85 ways individual action contributes towards the huge, planet-changing objectives at the heart of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Let us know what you find useful. Share with others and send us your suggestions at OneEarthLiving.org/contact-us
Educator
You teach and inspire the next generation and empower students. You want to provide them with the insight and support they need for sustainable living.
Resources from OneEarth Living, with partners:
- One Planet Saanich education materials and student challenge.
Other resources:
- Sustainable Lifestyles and Education Resources including this useful hub, teaching guidelines, methods, curriculum and materials created by PERL and also found on the United Nations One Planet Network site.
- Bioregional’s guidelines for schools for creating One Planet Action Plans
- Sign up your school for Cool It! Climate Leadership Training – BC Sustainable Energy Association or use Cool It Resources for Parents, Teachers and Kids – by the BC Sustainable Energy Association
- Video and teaching materials: Powering the Planet: Renewable Energy – Nature Lab – The Nature Conservancy – Join scientist Alex Wegmann on a Virtual Field Trip to explore a compelling question: How can we get the energy we need without harming nature?
- Online Resources for Remote Learning: Climate and Connection Unit – new from Be The Change Earth Alliance for middle and high school, with 15 values-based, solutions oriented modules aimed at online learning.
- Lesson plans from #NatureForAll: a collection of curriculum from around the world on Nature; and from the Biomimicry Institute.
- The Power of Media – this toolkit focuses on using different media as a key teaching and learning strategy to explore themes related to responsible living and sustainable development.
- Learnforourplanet video series from UNESCO.
- Sustainable Development Goals: resources for educators.
- Buy, Use, Toss: A Closer Look at the Things We Buy – ten fully-planned lessons by the Story of Stuff. This unit is correlated with national science and social studies standards and leads your students through an exploration of the system of producing and consuming goods that is called the materials economy.
Let us know what you find useful. Share with others and send us your suggestions at OneEarthLiving.org/contact-us
Researcher
You are curious and study the subject of sustainable living carefully. You gather information, look for patterns, exchange with other researchers and stakeholders, and build understanding. You provide frameworks, models, case studies and more that clarify the problem and opportunities for thinking and action. You value knowledge in all its forms and people from academics to Indigeneous peoples to local practitioners.
Resources from OneEarth Living, with partners:
- Global Research Forum on Sustainable Production and Consumption – created by and for the community of researchers and practitioners engaged in research on the worldwide transition to sustainable production and consumption systems.
- SCORAI – Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative – an international knowledge network of researchers and practitioners committed to building a flourishing and ecologically sound society by changing the way we consume.
Other resources:
- Lifestyles Actions from 11 Researchers – a series of videos featuring young researchers and the actions they are taking in commemoration of World Environment Day.
- Future Earth Knowledge Action Networks on Systems of Sustainable Consumption and Production – a global network of researchers and practitioners interested in ways that sustainable consumption and production systems can be created, nurtured, and contribute to a more sustainable world, including enabling all people to lead flourishing lives within biophysical constraints.
Let us know what you find useful. Share with others and send us your suggestions at OneEarthLiving.org/contact-us
Media
You are a key culture-maker. You shape our and public understanding of sustainable living. You tell stories, educate, and reach large audiences. You influence our attitudes, thoughts and behaviours. You reflect our society and keep us updated on the latest news.
Resources from OneEarth Living, with partners:
- Fostering and Communicating Sustainable Lifestyles – a guide to build engagement campaigns that advance sustainable ways of living – with 16 cases from around the world.
Other resources:
- How to Make Sustainable Living the New Normal. An Expert Workshop for Media and Policy Makers – a United Nations and Futerra publication tapping into the strategic power of media and cultural influencers to effect change and promote more sustainable lifestyles, with example actionable communication plans.
Let us know what you find useful. Share with others and send us your suggestions at OneEarthLiving.org/contact-us
Packages
Click on one or more of the packages below for insights and guidance.
In Canada? Enter the Live Net Zero Challenge. Win up to $10,000 in cash prizes!
Households across Canada are rising to the challenge to live more sustainably, reduce their carbon footprints and inspire others to do the same. With the Household Challenge, you can win big as you complete sustainable living actions, share your story and spark action nationwide. Students and educators can join the Classroom Challenge for additional cash prizes. Enter by November 15, 2025 for your chance to win – and spread the word. Get started at LiveNetZero.org.
Check out our resources for additional inspiration and action!
6 Motivations for Sustainable Living Action in Québec (2024)
Explore the mix of motivations for sustainable living behaviours, with insights that help communities, policymakers and businesses normalize these actions among diverse audiences in Québec. OneEarth Living with RECYC-QUÉBEC.
Thriving Cities Guide (2024)
How cities can use policy, power, and partnerships to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support greater health and wellbeing for all, with case studies from Barcelona, Glasgow, and Amsterdam. Created by C40 Cities (Thriving Cities Initiative) with OneEarth Living.