Glasgow awarded EarthCheck Benchmarked Community status

Glasgow is the first UK city to achieve EarthCheck Benchmarked Community status.

The EarthCheck Sustainable Destinations Program is a worldwide network of destinations that aim to achieve world-leading sustainability outcomes. Supported by the EarthCheck benchmarking, certification and performance improvement system, the program uses EarthCheck science to tackle environmental and social problems such as climate change, waste reduction and non-renewable resource management.

As Glasgow hosted the second week of the COP26 Climate Change Conference, it also celebrated being awarded EarthCheck Benchmarked Community status, confirming the city's vision to develop a strong circular and regenerative economy. 

The EarthCheck program helps destinations measure and monitor their environmental and social impact, allowing them to prepare and track that performance against their own targets and the performance of other communities. In September 2020, Glasgow partnered with Earthcheck to assist the city in benchmarking its performance, and to deliver higher standards of health and hygiene during the cities recovery from COVID-19. 

"We are incredibly proud of becoming the first UK city to achieve EarthCheck's Benchmarked Community status, and even more so to announce this while the city hosts COP26.

"As a small city with huge ambition, the EarthCheck Destination Standard plays a key role in helping us to position Glasgow as an international destination for business, investment, and tourism. By achieving the Benchmark status, we've shown that we're more than prepared to take action to safeguard and care for the health and wellbeing of our citizens and visitors, and to continue to rebuild confidence in our special city.

"This first step is just the beginning in Glasgow's journey to achieving EarthCheck Destination Certification, and will allow us to measure and benchmark our city's footprint, meaning we can quickly identify issues and areas which require improvement."

Councillor David McDonald, Depute Leader of Glasgow City Council, Chair of Glasgow Life, and City Convener for Culture, Vibrancy and International Co-operation