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Sustainability and Climate

This page outlines the measures Thornbury Town Council is taking to enhance our sustainability and respond to the climate crisis

Sustainability

Sustainability is a key consideration for Thornbury Town Council. It takes a sustainable approach to its operational practices and its purchasing decisions, defined as seeking to ‘meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.

The Town Council achieve this by focusing on 4 areas:

Nature-Friendly Operations - In our green spaces we seek to balance the needs of people and nature, enabling both to thrive.

Cutting our Carbon Footprint - by introducing energy saving measures, reducing our consumption and replacing our fossil fuelled equipment we are successfully reducing our carbon emissions year on year.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle - we are reducing our waste by limiting the use of single-use plastics where possible, recycling a large proportion of our waste and improving the fixability and durability of our equipment.

Supporting our Town - we are working with partner organisations and residents to help Thornbury become more sustainable.


Decarbonisation

Since 2022, Thornbury Town Council has reduced its carbon footprint by 40%. It has done this by improving its working practices, reducing energy consumption and investing in energy efficiency measures. These changes not only make sense for the planet, but also for the pocket. With rising and unpredictable energy costs, which are not capped for commercial customers, reducing consumption and enhancing our ability to generate our own power, makes good economic sense too.

As our latest carbon report shows, our single biggest emitter is still our reliance on gas heating, particularly at the Town Hall. Work is ongoing to ensure this historic building can be fit for purpose far into the future. The same goes for all our buildings - any work carried out is being done so with sustainability in mind.

Amazing progress has already been made and our decarbonisation road map shows the scale of work still to do to make TTC carbon neutral. Given economic, technical and physical restrictions, we will inevitably have some residual emissions left, even after all possible decarbonisation measures have been put in place. Our approach to this is, in the first instance, to improve our carbon capture by planting trees and hedges on our own land. 

Climate Resilience

Thornbury Town Council is striving to reduce its environmental impact. However, we recognise that climate change is happening now and that we will need to take measures to mitigate its impacts.

These might include dealing with 

  • Drought
  • Increasing incidences of extreme heat/heat waves
  • Flooding
  • Increasingly severe and more frequent storms
  • Sea level rises
  • Threats to food security
  • Changing seasonality of extreme weather
  • Increasing biodiversity loss and mass species extinction

We are working in the following areas to mitigate the worst impacts of these events:

  • Planning Policy and Consultation
  • Grounds Management
  • Landscape design and land use
  • Building design, retrofit and use
  • Collaborations with organisations locally and nationally to enhance Thornbury’s climate resilience.


More details about how we can mitigate against climate change can be found in the full decarbonisation road map.

Graphic Source: West of England Combined Authority.

Supporting Documents

Sustainable Purchasing and Procurement Guidelines v0.pdf

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