Where in England is best for Green Living?

Is your region the greenest?

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When it comes to living a sustainable lifestyle, there are plenty of things to take into consideration.

From having a green home, to forming sustainable habits, we at 100Green, analysed solar panel installations, household recycling rates, garden size, electricity consumption and battery powered car registrations to discover the English regions that lead the greenest lifestyles - and those that don’t.

You can see the full details of the data below to see where has been crowned the best for green living and homes.

The Greenest Regions, revealed

Dorset was crowned the greenest region, scoring 74 points out of a possible 100. The East Midlands region of Rutland came just behind Dorset with 73 points out of 100, this was followed by Shropshire (65/100), East Sussex (64/100) and the Isle of Wight (63/100).

And with Dorset Council’s 2040 net-zero target, they’ll be pleased to see that residents are also helping out with green initiatives.

Our study found that Dorset residents are the best recyclers, with 59% of their household waste going to recycling collections. In fact, the council have recently expanded their recycling abilities to include cartons and foil to make recycling as easy as possible for residents.

Dorset placed second when looking at solar panel installations per capita, with 5,672 installations taking place per 100,000 people. Our study found when looking at this factor for sustainable homes, Rutland, which placed second in the study overall, took the crown in this area with 8,899 solar panel installations per 100,000 people.

For those interested in green energy, solar panels can be the perfect way to make a sustainable switch - with plenty of advantages for the planet and your home.

Despite placing first overall in the study, the Southwestern county of Dorset only came in fourth place when looking at garden size (538.4 m2).

In comparison, Herefordshire residents boast the most garden space with an average of 684.5 m2 of outdoor space per home, making them the perfect candidates for creating sustainable gardens to lead an even greener lifestyle.


Rank Ceremonial County Private Solar Panel Installations per 100,000 people % of household waste that is recycled Average size of private outdoor space (m2) Domestic electricity consumption % of registered vehicles that are battery powered Total number of points (out of a possible 100)
1 Dorset 5,672 59.1% 538.4 3,745 2.8% 74.1
2 Rutland 8,899 50.9% 547.5 3,883 3.8% 73.0
3 Shropshire 3,893 52.1% 572.0 3,519 2.2% 65.4
4 East Sussex 3,203 41.1% 507.2 3,480 3.5% 64.3
5 Isle of Wight 3,038 47.7% 437.6 3,485 3.1% 62.7
6 West Sussex 2,231 53.7% 406.2 3,639 4.1% 61.6
7 Surrey 1,832 54.0% 526.7 4,182 7.3% 60.5
8 Essex 2,433 48.8% 506.6 3,813 3.6% 59.5
=9 Hampshire 3,393 38.7% 407.1 3,671 4.1% 58.4
=9 Oxfordshire 2,168 58.5% 430.8 4,104 5.0% 58.4


Which region is the least green?

At the other end of the scale, the region of Merseyside was found to be the least green, scoring under 30 out of a possible 100 points in the study, despite having a low average energy consumption.

The region placed in the bottom five when looking at solar panel installations, recycling rates and garden size, which lead them to their overall lower score.

Evidently, while ‘going green’ is more mainstream, there is clearly more to be done around the country to make this accessible for everyone.

In fact, our previous research found that the overwhelming majority of people (81%) would consider installing green features such as solar panels or heat pumps if there were better incentives to improve the efficiency of their homes.

Lack of education can also lead to a gap in our ability to ‘go green’, as almost 9 in 10 (88%) stated that they wanted more public education on green energy, and there isn’t enough support out there for people who want to make the switch.

This sentiment rises amongst those in the North East (90%) and North West (91%), with more residents wanting education on green energy. 1 in 5 (21%) in the region also stated that their main reason for not switching to green energy is a lack of understanding - this knowledge gap could possibly be a contributing cause of the low rankings for the North when it comes to our greenest lifestyles study.

Tyne and Wear placed second to last in the least green rankings - with 36 out of 100 - the region was found to have the lowest recycling rate of the entire study as just 32% of household waste is recycled in the area.

Fortunately, for those in the area Sunderland, Gateshead, and South Tyneside have recently announced that they will be working together to address issues with their dry recycling collection. This comes after the area has seen paper recycling rates fall by 15-22% over the last decade.

However, this is perhaps a less surprising stat when you learn that 84% of people make recycling errors when binning items, and as the highest recycling rate in the study was just 59% - it’s clear there’s room for improvement and more education across all the regions in this area.

However, those in Tyne and Wear won’t be needing any tips on how to reduce energy use, as they had the lowest domestic energy consumption in the study - placing them first for this metric.


Rank Ceremonial County Private Solar Panel Installations per 100,000 people % of household waste that is recycled Average size of private outdoor space (m2) Domestic electricity consumption % of registered vehicles that are battery powered Total number of points (out of a possible 100)
1 Merseyside 1,132 34.7% 200.2 2,943 2.5% 29.7
2 Tyne and Wear 1,936 32.0% 173.8 2,761 2.7% 36.2
3 County Durham 2,607 37.1% 213.7 2,845 2.2% 36.8
4 West Yorkshire 1,438 41.5% 231.0 3,121 2.5% 37.8
5 London 562 32.70% 169.1 3,248 12.0% 38.9
=6 Lancashire 1,722 42.8% 262.1 3,261 2.6% 40.5
=6 N'ptonshire 2,288 43.3% 414.2 7,065.20 2.8% 40.5
8 West Midlands 462 45.1% 356.5 3,327 2.5% 41.1
9 Grtr Manchester 1,375 50.2% 187.0 3,184 2.7% 43.8
10 Northumberland 2,412 34.0% 342.8 3,355 3.1% 44.3


Country Durham (37/100), West Yorkshire (38/100) and London (39/100) completed the bottom five of the rankings.

Despite having the highest percentage of battery powered vehicles (12%) in the study, London was found to have the smallest gardens, and placed second from bottom when looking at solar panels per 100,000 residents and recycling rates.

Interestingly, this makes London the only Southern region to place within the least green rankings.



Meanwhile, as mentioned above, no Northern regions made it into the top 10 greenest regions at all. East Yorkshire was revealed as the greenest Northern region, placing 24th overall in the study (46 points out of a possible 100), proving that we still have a way to go to make green living a reality for all.

Methodology

We analysed GOV/ONS data on:


- Domestic solar photovoltaic deployment
- Local authority collected waste management
- Access to gardens space
- Regional and local authority electricity consumption
- Vehicle licensing statistics

Which we then matched to the applicable ceremonial counties. These were then ranked and totalled to creating our ranked dataset.

* South Yorkshire has been removed from rankings due to incomplete data.