Embedding Environmental Sustainability Across Active Essex
Creating greener active spaces and places for a healthier Essex
Active Essex has taken significant steps over the past year to embed environmental sustainability at the centre of its internal operations, organisational culture and place based decision making.
In response to the growing climate emergency, and aligned with Sport England’s Every Move sustainability strategy, Active Essex has prioritised carbon literacy, reduced emissions, greener travel behaviours and more sustainable organisational practices. This internal shift is now directly shaping how Active Essex influences the development, use and activation of active environments across the county, ensuring Essex’s spaces and places support both an active population and a thriving natural environment.
Active Essex has played a convening and influential leadership role as this work has evolved. The organisation began by adopting clear sustainability policies and committing to national movements such as Sport England’s Every Move mission and the Active Partnerships Environmental Sustainability Commitment. Through carbon literacy training, cross‑team leadership and systematic emissions monitoring, Active Essex has worked to embed a shared understanding of the links between the environment and physical activity across its staff team. This cultural shift has empowered staff to integrate sustainability principles into programme design, relationship management and locality‑based delivery, helping make environmentally responsible choices part of everyday practice rather than occasional considerations. As a result, environmental sustainability is becoming an organisational norm, shaping decisions that influence Essex’s active spaces and the communities they serve.
This commitment has been supported by an expanding evidence base. To date, 28 staff members have completed Carbon Literacy Training, placing Active Essex firmly on the path to becoming a gold‑standard carbon literate organisation by 2026. Findings from the internal emissions survey have provided a clear baseline for future reductions, revealing weekly average staff emissions generated through homeworking, commuting and partner meetings. In addition, recorded long‑distance travel miles have offered practical insights to guide the development of greener travel policies. These data points, combined with sustainability‑focused priorities within the 2025–26 Implementation Plan, have strengthened the organisation’s ability to influence greener active design, encourage the use of green and blue spaces, and embed environmental considerations into Active Environments and Find Your Active programmes.
This work has only been possible through strong partnership collaboration. Essex County Council has played an important role in supporting carbon literacy training and aligning efforts to the Essex Climate Action Commission’s recommendations. Active Essex’s continued alignment with Sport England’s Every Move
strategy (and its collaboration with BASIS) has also ensured consistency with national direction and best practice.
Key Learnings
It's important to take time to reflect and understand the learnings from work undertaken, to focus on ways to improve in the future.
Awareness
Staff have a deeper understanding of how they can impact the organisation’s carbon footprint.
Complexity
Balancing sustainability with operational realities has presented ongoing challenges.
Design
Creating consistent measurement tools for organisational emissions required careful development.
Embedding
Ongoing reinforcement proved essential to prevent sustainability becoming a one‑off effort.
Despite these learnings and challenges, early ripple effects are already evident across the wider system. Staff confidence in championing environmentally sustainable delivery has increased, enabling more productive conversations with partners about greener practices, active travel and sustainable events. As a result, more organisations are exploring opportunities to secure funding through Sport England’s Every Move – Movement Fund and are beginning to review their own sustainability policies. Active Essex’s leadership has helped shift expectations across the system, positioning environmental sustainability not as an optional enhancement but as a core component of high‑quality project design and facility development.
From growing carbon literacy across our team to embedding greener decision‑making into everyday practice, we’re building a culture where responsible choices become the norm. I’m incredibly proud to be part of a movement that’s not only reducing our environmental impact but beginning to inspire partners and local organisations to do the same, helping create healthier, more resilient active places across Essex.Stuart Tryhorn, Relationship Development Officer South East Essex
Looking ahead, Active Essex will formalise its carbon baseline and launch a detailed Carbon Reduction Action Plan to support year‑on‑year emissions reductions, and continuing carbon literacy training throughout 2026 will help the organisation progress towards the Carbon Literacy Organisational Award. The next phase will also involve working with partners to embed sustainability requirements within commissioning processes and developing new resources to support local organisations in adopting greener behaviours. This forward‑thinking approach will ensure that environmentally responsible practice is fully integrated across all Active Environments work - from the activation of local spaces to policy influence at system level - helping build greener, healthier and more resilient active places across Essex.
