Living sustainable lifestyles

Supporting efforts to stabilise human population and reduce resource consumption to achieve socially and ecologically sustainable development.

Developing comprehensive strategies to address population, production and consumption patterns and their impact upon environmental sustainability. Supporting initiatives to reduce resource consumption by promoting the elimination or reduction of waste at source, and its re-use, recycling, and recovery.

Global figures indicate that 77% of the world's people earn 15% of total income; that 24% of the world's population consume 75% of energy, mineral and metal resources, and more than half the world's food; and that over 90% of waste in the world is generated by the affluent. What is clear is that people's use of resources is very uneven, and that consumption is highest amongst the industrial sector and the more affluent. Strategies thus need to address not only the stabilisation of population growth, but also the wasteful overconsumption of natural resources.

Eco-Home is a centre for the study, development and demonstration of an ecologically sound lifestyle in an urban setting. It first opened in 1988, a 1911 California bungalow which had been retrofitted with a solar hot water heater, a photovoltaic system, an ultra low-flush toilet, and many other energy and water conservation systems both indoors and out. Eco-Home now functions as a community resource centre with information on the subject of ecological urban living for individuals, business and government agencies. It acts as a paradigm of the home as a production, rather than a consumption centre. More than 10,000 people from all over the world have visited Eco-Home since it first opened.