Why shared responsibility is the key to sustainable change
Waste is more than just an environmental issue — it’s a social and systemic challenge. Too often, responsibility for tackling problems like waste, climate change, and inequality is pushed either upwards to governments or downwards to individuals. But what if we recognised that real solutions come from the middle — where local communities, businesses, and institutions take shared ownership of the problem?
This is the principle of cooperative subsidiarity — the idea that decisions and responsibility should sit at the most local, capable level, but with the right support from wider systems. It’s not about shifting burdens, but about empowering communities while ensuring they have the backing they need to succeed.
Three shifts towards cooperative subsidiarity
1. From top-down control to shared stewardship
Many public services operate through command-and-control structures, assuming central oversight leads to better outcomes. But real impact happens when local groups are empowered to co-own and co-design solutions.
→ In Adur & Worthing, waste management initiatives have moved beyond council-led approaches to community-led action on litter and sustainability, fostering a shared sense of responsibility (Adur & Worthing News).
→ The Royal Society of Arts’ ‘Regenerative Futures’ report (RSA) highlights how place-based stewardship models can deliver better environmental and social outcomes than centralised control.
Step to apply: Shift from service provision to service stewardship — where councils and institutions support communities to take ownership of local challenges with resources, guidance, and flexibility.
2. From individual responsibility to collective action
Too often, environmental and social issues are framed as personal responsibilities — ‘recycle more,’ ‘use less plastic,’ ‘volunteer more.’ But expecting individuals to solve systemic problems alone is unrealistic and unfair. Real change happens when communities work together.
→ The New Economics Foundation’s ‘Cooperative Advantage’ report (NEF) explores how mutual aid networks and cooperative governance models enable collective solutions to shared problems.
→ In Preston’s community wealth-building model, anchor institutions and local businesses collectively shifted procurement and investment strategies to ensure money stayed in the local economy, reducing economic leakage and creating local resilience (Centre for Local Economic Strategies).
Step to apply: Design policies that incentivise collective action rather than just individual behaviour change. Create spaces for people to work together rather than expecting change to happen in isolation.
3. From one-size-fits-all policies to local adaptability
Many well-intentioned policies fail because they assume what works in one place will work everywhere. Cooperative subsidiarity allows solutions to be shaped by local context, while still ensuring broader support and accountability.
→ The King’s Fund’s ‘Integrated Care Systems’ report (King’s Fund) explores how locally tailored health and social care partnerships create better long-term outcomes than rigid, top-down NHS structures.
→ In Glasgow’s People Make Places initiative, local decision-making in urban planning led to better social infrastructure, ensuring that public spaces reflected the needs of different communities rather than applying a single city-wide blueprint.
Step to apply: Move away from rigid frameworks. Create adaptable policies and funding structures that allow communities to tailor solutions to their specific needs while maintaining accountability.
4. A call to action: Let’s design systems that empower, not just delegate
We need to move beyond simply handing off responsibility to communities and instead design systems that genuinely support shared ownership of challenges and solutions.
So ask yourself: Where is your organisation holding too much control? How could you create space for local groups to lead, while ensuring they have the support they need?
