EarthCheck Benchmarked Community status for Glasgow

Glasgow City Council is celebrating the city being awarded the EarthCheck Benchmarked Community status, confirming the city's vision to develop a strong circular and regenerative economy.

This benchmarking achievement marks a significant step for Glasgow on its way to becoming one of the world's most sustainable and resilient places to live, visit and do business.

In September last year, Glasgow partnered with international sustainability leader EarthCheck to assist the city in benchmarking its environmental and social performance, and to deliver higher standards of health and hygiene in a coronavirus recovery environment. The EarthCheck Sustainable Destinations programme helps communities to measure and monitor their environmental economic, and social impact, and prepare and track that performance against their own targets and the performance of other destinations across the world.

EarthCheck Sustainable Destinations has provided Glasgow with a scientific framework to benchmark, certify, and continuously improve its environmental, cultural, social, and economic performance. Most importantly, EarthCheck has also helped the city to navigate its way forward in a post-pandemic tourism and travel environment.

David McDonald, Depute Leader of Glasgow City Council, said: "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 well-being 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."