Imagine living in a community where your neighbours all committed to a single set of actions that would make our world more sustainable and liveable. Wouldn’t you feel more inclined to eat one more meatless meal every week, actually sort your recycling, or take less car trips? This is where the Lighter Footprint Project was born. The project is an ambassador program that equips motivated individuals with a toolkit which allows them to work with their neighbours to collectively lower their ecological footprint, while simultaneously cultivating community connections.

If everyone in the world lived like a Vancouverite, we would need three Earths; we only have one. Vancouver’s Greenest City Action Plan aims to lower Vancouver’s ecological footprint by 33% by the year 2020. Most of the City’s solutions are on an infrastructural level despite most of the problem being on a household level. The Lighter Footprint Project aims to bridge the gap between regular citizens and the Greenest City Action Plan, in a way that promotes tangible and impactful change in Vancouver’s ecological footprint. The Lighter Footprint Project creates sustainable, connected communities through the creation of a toolkit which enables motivated individuals to act as Ambassadors and equip their neighbours with the knowledge and resources needed for one‐planet living. The toolkit includes a variety or scaleable and easy‐to‐use resources that can be implemented on every block, and in every building or complex. A two‐week, condensed implementation of the toolkit took place in a multi‐family housing complex in the Marpole area of Vancouver. This pilot included both a launch and wrap‐up event, ecological footprint measuring and education, and the implementation of a soft‐plastics recycling program.