Random Lifestyle Tip:
Buy recycled, Fair Trade or organic clothes - try charity shops, People Tree and TRAID for starters
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Buyer's Guide to a Greener Home

Launch Event Sponge will be launching the ‘Buyers’ Guide to Greener Homes’ at London’s Living Room, GLA Building, on Monday 18th of February. Supported by: Sponge are pleased to welcome Mr Iain Wright MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for the Department of Communities and Local Government (CLG) to give the keynote speech. Other speakers will include Sonny Masero, Managing Director ESD / Camco UK and Chani Leahong, Senior Associate Fulcrum Consulting. The Buyers Guide to Greener Homes provides prospective homebuyers with the information and advice they need on the features to look for and what questions to ask when buying a home. The Guide covers all facets of the home including energy, water, waste, materials, transport, healthy living and local community, helping to raise the level of understanding of homebuyers on sustainability issues. It is co- funded by Defra through the Environment Action Fund (EAF) and supported by the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG). The guide is kindly sponsored by Fulcrum Consulting Please join us in the celebrations, to find out more about the guide and help Sponge to promote and distribute it to the people who need it most! Places are limited, so please RSVP to Jackie McKeay as soon as possible. Sponge are always looking for volunteers so please get in touch if you want to be involved!

Story Added: 2008-01-30 17:22:01 Story Last Edited: 2008-02-12 22:04:25

Welcome to the Sponge Lifestyle Project!

Building the Market for Sustainable Lifestyles is a 3-year project co-funded by Defra and delivered by the Sponge Sustainability Network. The project will research, compile and disseminate the case for building homes that encourage sustainable lifestyles. Property developers, designers, house-builders and contractors can encourage sustainable patterns of consumption through motivating changes in behaviour by undertaking three types of activity:

1. Create communities where an individual can associate themselves with neighbours who are also living a sustainable lifestyle.
2. Design in measures to create domestic environments where sustainable lifestyle choices are the norm.
3. Provide information to residents to allow them to make "rational choices".
   

There is an increasing body of experience and research that supports the case for sustainable homes, but it is undersubscribed and further work is required to give the business case further credibility. Sponge will bring together this new and existing information and disseminate it to our members as well as other interested parties through a programme of events. Sponge will undertake a further study, in partnership with house-builders and housing associations (as the client bodies) to demonstrate that there is a case and demand for sustainable housing schemes. This demand for sustainable houses reflects an interest in sustainable lifestyles, which goes hand in hand with sustainable consumption and production. Put simply ‘sustainable consumption and production’ is getting more from less.

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