Resource Consumption footprint

As the Environment Agency, our role is to create a better place for people and wildlife. As well as regulating and supporting businesses and organisations to protect and improve the environment and achieve sustainable growth, we ourselves need to act urgently to tackle our own negative impacts on the planet.

The Environment Agency (EA) has an ambitious sustainability strategy eMission2030 which addresses the 4 pillars of sustainability:

Responding to the climate emergency - net zero by 2030

Optimising our use of resources – moving from a linear to a circular business model

Delivering environmental net gain

Benefitting people and communities - social value

This brief focuses on b) resource optimisation and our goal to move from a linear to a circular economy model.

The latest evidence tells us that 1.7 Earths are needed to support our global demands. We want to live within our planetary boundaries and play our part in working to achieve United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG) 12; “Responsible Production and Consumption”. To do this, we need to understand what the Environment Agency currently uses in terms of resources, so that we can measure our progress.

We are looking to calculate the resource consumption of our organisation. We would like to

set a baseline against which we can record and report reductions in this. The approach we

seek therefore needs to be repeatable on an annual basis and sensitive enough to record

actual reductions in our consumption habits

The approach we seek must:

a) Use independent thinking and impartial circular economy expertise

b) Use current best practice thinking on measuring resource consumption including the

pros / cons, and applicability to EA

c) Develop a methodology for the EA taking into consideration the types of data we

have available i.e. spend, waste etc..

d) Set out views on metrics: volume, weight, scarcity, wider sustainability impacts, and

how these would be used in any proposed methodology

e) Produce a resource consumption footprint using our primary (actual) data sources

where available, and advise on future data collection options

f) Be sensitive enough to record actual changes Be repeatable on an annual basis to

measure progress

g) Follow recognised protocols and procedures in this area

h) Create a hotspot map of where our key sustainability impacts sit in the form of

‘materials’ and ‘products’ consumed (by type, quantity & business unit), in order to

prioritise our work

The approach we seek must not:

A) Calculate the resource consumption baseline as only a carbon measure. We want

carbon included but are equally open to other measures