Hi there! Welcome to Win-Win Planet.
Would you like to live a lifestyle that is kind to both yourself, and the natural world? Win-Win Planet can help empower you with simple yet effective action ideas, to create exactly that, one step at a time.
We suggest one Win-Win action every few weeks, that you and others can easily implement and enjoy, whilst saving the planet.
Together, we can improve our own health and wellbeing, and restore the health of the living planet. Join us!
(Photo from urbanizehub.com)
Our principles
Planetary health is…
“the achievement of the highest attainable standard of health, wellbeing, and equity worldwide through judicious attention to the human systems—political, economic, and social—that shape the future of humanity and the Earth’s natural systems that define the safe environmental limits within which humanity can flourish.
Put simply, planetary health is the health of human civilisation, and the state of the natural systems on which it depends”.
Rockefeller-Lancet Commission on Planetary Health, 2015
Navigating our content
We organise win-win action posts in two ways.
Firstly, we classify actions by lifestyle factor, such as; food & water, home environment, transport or money. Each of these has it’s own page. This makes it easy to choose a lifestyle factor that interests you from the menu bar, and view related posts.
Secondly, each action targets key drivers of planetary health, as described in the model below. Posts are labelled with icons from this model, to show which aspects of planetary health the action can influence. We hope this helps to put daily activities in a planetary context!
The Win-Win Planetary Health Model
The author developed the model below to visualise and simplify the key drivers of planetary health. In this framework there are six interconnected key drivers. These revolve around a seventh: access to quality information about our world. It’s through accurate knowledge, that we can make informed decisions about what we truly want for ourselves and our planet. So the “i” symbolises information, as well as the power of the individual “I” to influence each driver, and the world.
Gratuitous table
To show how this concept relates to other models for planetary sustainability, (and that I didn’t just pull all this out of my hat; here is a table (sorry, epidemiologists are kinda obsessed with tables..!) It shows how the drivers relate to the Planetary Boundaries framework proposed by Johan Rockström, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As you can see, those 6 drivers cover a lot of ground. But I’m not a world-renowned scientist or the UN, so I don’t propose boundaries or goals. They are just the key levers that our actions either push or pull, to stabilise or destabilise our planet.
A note on individual action
Although we champion individual action, I must also stress, that the entire world does not rest on your shoulders alone. We are all in this together.
Sometimes, there is no “good choice” at the individual consumer level. Or there is, but it’s prohibitively difficult or expensive for many people. So we also need to get political, to target higher-level factors influencing the health of people and planet. This can include: signing petitions, writing to MPs, protesting, and supporting NGOs to raise awareness and funds for environmental issues and action projects.
Check out our Political page for petitions and letter campaigns you can add your voice to!
Which will make the bigger difference: 50,000 people taking their own bag to the supermarket, or 50,000 writing to their MP to ban plastic bags?
Climate for Change volunteer, 2020
About the author
Hi, my name is Margaret Phillips. I’m a Kiwi Australian Registered Nurse of 16 years, mostly in ICU, although I’m now a pain nurse consultant. I’m also a medical researcher, having published my own studies, and co-ordinated clinical trials. I completed a Masters in Epidemiology in 2020 (ohh the irony!). This covered patterns of infectious diseases, non-communicable diseases (including mental health conditions), and environmental threats to health.
I have longstanding passions for both health equity and environmental conservation… But I only recently came to realise how intertwined they are.
The climate change and ecosystem disruption we are facing is affecting the distributions of all disease types. Some changes are rapid, and we have to adapt quickly. I want people to be empowered with the best available information, and to realise they have choices. Together, we can choose health and happiness, reduce inequality and restore the living earth.
I want to see us heal, and learn to thrive together as one world.*
* Am I idealistic? Maybe. But maybe we need scientific idealists to imagine, and chart paths to a better world. Come and walk with me, and I think before long you’ll see it too.
Disclaimer: This is my first website (except for attempting a travelling student blog in 2020 – you can probably guess how that went!). So if it looks like it was set up by a bear, well. I’m learning, so please be patient and kind. Let me know what you think, or if you have skills and want to help 😉