Everybody - organisations large and small can make a difference:

Colleges and Universities - who educate trainee architects, planners, designers, engineers and others about the principles and application of sustainability.

Professional Practices - architects, landscape architects, engineers, quantity surveyors, planners who tell clients what is possible, what the options are and what it will cost, who specify materials and designs.

Developers - who seize opportunities to build projects, analysing the market and identifying opportunities, learning about client and community needs and aspirations.

Local Authorities - in a wide range of roles; as strategic planners, convening partnerships, setting local policy, leading the Local Plan, community strategy and village appraisal processes; as regulators in the planning system, building regulations, care facilities, education etc; as procurers of a significant range of services and investment.

Housing Associations - who procure social housing projects and can set a standard for sustainable houses and take a lead in integrating housing with other sustainable practices.

Contracting Firms - who choose how to carry out projects, how to dispose of waste, manage noise and disturbance, preserve valuable environmental assets as they work, employ local people and give them training, source local materials.

Regulatory Institutions - such as the Environment Agency, planning authorities, trading standards, health, safety and building regulation inspectors and OFSTED can ensure guidance and statutory documents explicitly include sustainability principles. In everyday work, they can apply these principles and encourage others to do so, showing the way.

Clients - a vast range of individuals and organisations including housing associations, teaching and health institutions, agents commissioning transport infrastructure as well as private companies and institutions, commissioning offices, factories, homes, shops, sports and cultural buildings - who can demand higher standards of planning for sustainability, without necessarily paying more for it.

Financial institutions - who lend money, underwrite developments and provide much of the incentive for the way a business is run or a development undertaken.