Lighter Footprint

Achieving the Lighter Footprint goal requires everyone to take action.

The focus of the Lighter Footprint goal for the next four years is to:

• Empower residents to take action
• Address gaps
• Support culture change

Our 2015-2020 priority actions for the Lighter Footprint goal are:

• 10.1 - Continue or expand Greenest City Grants and CityStudio Programs.
• 10.2 - Develop a municipal sharing economy strategy.
• 10.3 - Support a community of action on Lighter Footprint by sharing information and facilitating and encouraging community leaders. 
• 10.4 - Explore how partnerships and connections to programs and infrastructure can reduce the ecological footprint of food consumption.

Measuring Vancouver’s ecological footprint is very complex and made more difficult because much of the required data is only available on a national or regional level. Measuring the number of “people empowered to take action” is a way to measure success in the ultimate objective of the Lighter Footprint goal: to enable residents to help collectively reduce our community’s environmental impact.

This metric is maintained by the Sustainability Group within the City Manager’s Office at the City. 

Definition of “People empowered to take action”

“People empowered to take action” is defined as those who are:

• Enabled by the programs we support to change their lifestyle
• Or, are implementing a community project that helps us achieve our Greenest City goals as a result of the support provided by the programs we lead or support

Examples include:

• Learning to preserve food or ride a bike in a community centre class
• People involved in projects supported by the Greenest City Fund

The definition excludes people:

• Participating in a dialogue or consultation
• Attending an event
• Using infrastructure (e.g., bike lanes, food scraps collection)
• Receiving a personal incentive (e.g., home energy retrofits)