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Environment policy and targets

The Kent County Council environment policy (PDF, 915.5 KB) sets out our commitment to:

  • reduce our carbon dioxide emissions
  • make sure our estate and services are adapted to the future impacts and opportunities of climate change
  • contribute positively to Kent's character, local environmental quality and natural environment.

We have committed to achieve net zero emissions by 2030 for our own estate, operations and traded services. Monitoring against this target started from April 2021.

Read our Net Zero Action Plan to learn more about how we are delivering to this target.

What we have already achieved

Our target of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 32% by 2021 compared to a 2015 baseline has been exceeded. In March 2021 we achieved a 47% reduction (in part due to the impacts of COVID-19 restricting travel).

Our target of zero waste to landfill by 2021 was achieved by 2018 and we continue to reduce our use of single use plastics and other disposable items (this applies to the waste collected and disposed of from our offices and other Kent County Council occupied buildings and not the domestic waste collected by district and borough councils. A separate Kent wide target applies to domestic waste).

A significant contribution to reducing energy and related emissions is due to changing our street lights to LED technology. For our latest figures on energy performance please see our Climate Emergency Performance page.

All of our services are expected to deliver relevant Kent Environment Strategy and the Kent and Medway Energy and Low Emissions Strategy priorities and contribute to net zero. We review the environment policy annually and provide reports to senior managers regarding progress against the environment targets. Find out more about the delivery of Kent-wide public sector targets on our Kent Environment Strategy page.