Think your town is too small to go big into sustainability? Think it takes too much money to make a real statement? Think again. Ashton Hayes, a village in Northwest England, is becoming a global model for how to live sustainably. And it’s doing so in ways that any town, no matter how small, can emulate.

The village has made becoming the country’s first zero carbon emissions community its goal, according to a piece by Sarah Mukherjee, environment correspondent for BBC News. It all started when Garry Charnock, a local resident, attended a literary festival where he heard the government’s former chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, talking about the need for action on climate change. “I came away wondering how I could make a difference,” he told the reporter. “And I realized that the little things, switching off lights, turning down your thermostat, that sort of thing, could make a big change overall if you did it at a community level.”
Charnock pulled Roy Alexander, another villager who is also professor of environmental sustainability at the University of Chester, on board, and the idea took off. Now, by doing the easy things like turning down the thermostat, the village has reduced its energy consumption by 23 percent. Charnock and Alexander even convinced the skeptical owner of the local pub to pitch in, telling him he could save as much as £250 by turning off his cooker in the mornings and keeping the beer outdoors rather than running the cooler in the winter.
Now the village is home to solar panels, wind turbines and other sources of alternative energy. And residents have successfully lobbied for a path linking the school, the railways and other communities to encourage walking. But the biggest plus to come out of the whole endeavor was the sense of community the project inspired. “I’ve lived in the village for 25 years, and I’ve met people I’ve never met before as a result of the project,” Lynn May, a local businesswoman, told the BBC.