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Our PSLifestyle Project Holds First Living Labs in 8 European Countries
30 June 2022
More plant-based food, cycling rather than driving, less air travel – the standard approaches for more sustainable everyday behaviours are familiar to many of us. But which actions really help to reduce our individual environmental footprint and how can we further align those to our diverse lifestyles. Moreover, how can we reconcile the pursuit of greater personal well-being with that of the planet?
As part of the PSLifestyle Living Labs, residents of 8 European countries (Portugal, Finland, Estonia, Germany, Slovenia, Italy, Greece and Turkey) have taken the first supportive steps to develop the PSL tool – a consumption-based carbon footprint calculator that helps us understand our ecological footprint, create a personal action plan to reduce it, and realise our ambitions to live well within ecological limits.
For the participants (groups of local citizens), the journey kicked off with an introduction to the concept of sustainable lifestyles and its application to their daily lives. The focus areas of the project, housing, mobility, food and general consumption, helped to make the concept more tangible. In addition, the participants exchanged views on their role as individuals vis-à-vis other stakeholders in order to drive the share of sustainable lifestyles.
Availability of and accessibility to more sustainable options, their slightly more expensive nature compared to the unsustainable counterparts and/or preference to consume certain products are some of challenges to adopting more sustainable consumption patterns, according to lab participants.
“A good balance between individual lifestyle behaviour changes and incentives from key actors to initiate and/or maintain such changes is seen as the perfect combination towards ensuring that everyone does their part in the quest towards more sustainable lifestyles”, noted one of the lab participants.
The participants had the opportunity to test the online PSL tool and work with it directly. After an initial calculation of their personal carbon footprint, they reflected on their experiences with the tool, the results, and exchanged views on the lifestyle test questions and how they can be further improved to adapt them to their local realities.
“It was fun to complete the test and helpful to see which areas had the greatest impact”, noted participants, while others added: “Reaching the 1,5-degree target seems urgent, however, it requires substantial lifestyle changes”.
The output of these first two meetings in all cities across Europe will now be used to further improve the PSL tool.
Are you located in any of these countries and would like to be part of co-designing the tool? At least four more lab meetings in each of these countries are upcoming between September 2022 and March 2023. In these meetings you will have the opportunity to co-design solutions and everyday actions that hold potential for making our lifestyles more sustainable as well as discuss pathways that could accelerate their wider roll out and make the visions of a good life with the enviroment in mind a reality! Learn more here!
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A version of this article was originally published on cscp.org
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This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101037342.