Entitled "I Will if You Will", the UK report is born out of an 18 months' consultation period, whereby the public opinion, businesses, NGOs and other stakeholders across Britain expressed themselves on possible solutions and preferable approaches to sustainable consumption.
As emerges from this constructive dialogue, UK citizens have a sharp appetite for policy measures that promote greener lifestyles – even radical, costly ones – as long as they are effectively and fairly applied. This implies:
- community action (rather than "futile," isolated individual actions);
- strong political leadership (government as a trendsetter);
- specific, visible actions ("practical catalysts") that widespread easily - like installing a mini-turbine on roof, for example;
- targeting "mainstream consumers" (rather than the existing minority of "green consumers").
The report especially recommends to:
- automatically enable travellers to 'carbon offset' their flights by way of a voluntary extra tax;
- to reduce energy consumption, first via the rolling out of "smart" meters by 2012, then by making micro-generation common in homes and public buildings;
- to make all schools and hospitals carbon-neutral by 2015;
- to ensure the affordability of efficient cars;
- to agree with business to remove the most damaging products from sales and replace them with environmental products (e.g. substituting alternative fish species to Britain’s much-loved but over-fished cod);
- to sustain the gains by developing a working economic model by 2008 to track links between national income, consumption growth and global resources
