We believe that being happy is good for everyone and that promoting human happiness does not need to be at odds with creating a sustainable future. There is a role for everyone in working towards a happier planet.
We've built this personal Happy Planet Index test to help you reflect on how you can create your own "good life that doesn't cost the earth". It only takes 5 minutes to complete the test. Once completed we'll send you a personalised report packed with insights.
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“A good way of defining waste is the use of planetary resources that don’t improve quality of life. Instead of environmental effectiveness being based on the restrictive view that we should simply ‘use less’,” we should instead ‘use well’. This offers the intersection of environmentalism and human aspiration.
To what extent do we – as individuals and as a culture – prioritise what really makes life worth living?
How many resources are we wasting – both as individuals and as a culture – on things that don’t even improve our lives? If we made a rule of targeting resources only at things that delivered quality of life, we would end up automatically saving the planet.”
– Colin Beavan, No Impact Man, February 2009
“This decade is a moment of choice unlike any we have ever lived. All of us alive right now share that responsibility and that opportunity. There are many changes to make over the next 10 years, and each of us will take different steps along the way.
But all of us start the transformation in one place, our mindset.
Faced with today’s facts, we can be indifferent, do nothing and hope the problem goes away. We can despair and plunge into paralysis, or we can become stubborn optimists with a fierce conviction that no matter how difficult, we must and we can rise to the challenge.”
– Christiana Figueres, Convenor of the 2015 Paris Agreement, October 2020
Use our promotion pack to start the conversation: “How can we live good lives that don’t cost the Earth?”
Happy Planet Index promotion pack
The Beacon for Sustainable Living is an initiative supporting those leading the way on sustainable everyday living. The goal is to move work forward by identifying creative strategies and overlooked approaches to living well for all within our ecological footprints in ways that reflect the scale, urgency and magnitude of change.
The Wellbeing Economy Alliance has at least two ways that you can get involved: you can join one of the 13 WEAll hubs around the world making a difference in their localities. Or you can become a WEAll Member, joining a network of over 350 organisations and thousands of individuals working together to transform the economic system.
The Post Growth Institute’s mission is to help lead the transition to a world where human systems thrive within ecological limits. Their Full Circle newsletter is a rich resource for networking and learning. You can sign-up on their home page.
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