Sustainability Action Plan

about this principle

The Challenge

We need to be water efficient and use rain and waste water sustainably. This all helps to reduce local flooding and droughts which is important here, with 50% of Sutton on the flood plain. The floods in July 2007 (pictured left) showed that we have a real need for Sustainable Water strategies and climate change adaptation and mitigation.

In Sutton we each use 171 litres of tap water every at home every day as well as 4,645 litres of embodied water in food and goods!

Aim

We suggest that a good target for Sutton would be to reduce household water consumption by 40% of the Sutton average, so from 171 litres per person per day to 103 litres by 2020.  At BedZED the residents use just 72 litres of mains water per person per day and another 15 litres of recycled or rain water.

Adaptation for climate change is also a key aim, and so perhaps we should also set a target (and strategies to achieve it) for numbers of at risk homes renovated to minimise flood damage. This would include measures like porous paving, sloping gardens away from the house and using swales and ponds to retain water when there is a heavy downpour.