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Sustainable development

London's ecological footprint

Key facts: each year London:

Uses more than 2 million tonnes of wood products
Eats 730,000 tonnes of vegetables
Utilises 36 million tonnes of building materials
Emits 50 million tonnes of carbon dioxide
Throws out 18 million tonnes of waste
Produces 8 million tonnes of sewage sludge

Ecological footprinting is a tool that helps us to estimate our impact on the planet. In 1995, the ecologist Herbert Girardet estimated that London's footprint was 125 times the size of the city itself. In other words, London required an area the size of the entire productive land surface of the UK in order to function in terms of its resource use and disposal of pollutants and waste. This footprint area is spread across the UK and throughout the world.

In 2000 the GLA co-funded a new ecological footprint study of London called 'City Limits'. The final report, by consultants Best Foot Forward was launched in September 2002. Key findings from the study showed that in the year 2000 Londoners:

Consumed 49 million tones of materials (or 6.1 tonnes each)
Consumed 154,407 GigaWatt hours of energy, and produced 41 million tones of CO2. Less than 1% of London's energy came from renewable sources.
Consumed 6.9 million tonnes of food, of which 81% came from outside the UK
Consumed 866 billion litres of water of which 28% was leakage
Traveled 64 billion passenger kilometres of which 69% was by car
Produced over 26 million tones of waste of which 71% was landfilled and only 9% recycled

This translates into an ecological footprint for London of 49 million global hectares (gha) - which is 42 times its biocapacity and 293 times its geographical area (roughly twice the size of the UK). With a population of 7.4 million people, this represents 6.63 global hectares per London resident. If everyone on the planet is entitled to an equal share of the Earth's bioproductive resources (termed the average earthshare) then we would each have 2.18 gha. On this basis, Londoners lifestyles can be said to be unsustainable and if everyone in the world was to consume as much as we do, then we would require at least three planets!

Further information can be obtained from the project website: www.citylimitslondon.com

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