An ambitious strategy to reduce emissions, improve sustainable energy use, increase recycling, plant more than 1400 trees and inspire the community to embrace sustainability has earned City of Canada Bay Council one of the State’s top annual environment awards.
LGNSW President Linda Scott said City of Canada Bay Council was a worthy winner of Local Government NSW’s (LGNSW) Excellence in the Environment Awards’ Local Sustainability Award and was a standout among an impressive field of 16 category winners.
“City of Canada Bay Council has done an outstanding job of developing a strategy that will lead their community to an environmentally sustainable future. It has already resulted in a 35 per cent reduction in council operational emissions and increased community recycling efforts,” Cr Scott said.
“Canada Bay is a great example of how councils punch well above their weight in delivering outstanding environmental outcomes with limited resources at their disposal.
“Each year NSW councils invest about $1.7 billion in environmental management collectively and these awards recognise and celebrate their achievements.”
Other individual category winners at this year’s awards included:
- Bathurst Regional Council’s Let’s Make It Last: water security communication and engagement program, which helped the Bathurst community achieve a substantial and sustained decrease of 63 per cent in water consumption to 130 litres per person per day from January 2019 to May 2020.
- Shoalhaven City Council’s Bushfire Demolition Waste recycling effort, in which the council set up a temporary processing facility to recycle about 18,000 tonnes of waste generated from homes destroyed in the summer bushfires to reduce pressure on limited local landfill capacity;
- Campbelltown City Council’s efforts to eradicate fast growing and fast spreading invasive Frogbit weed through a 15-month project that saw massive removal and vastly improved surveillance methods, greatly reducing the weed that had threatened to choke upper Georges River.
“Overall, there were 38 finalists in 16 categories, representing a vast variety of inspiring council-led environmental initiatives across NSW,” Cr Scott said.
“What is especially impressive is that many councils undertook these resource-demanding projects while fighting through the effects of drought, devastating bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“NSW councils have a strong environmental record and LGNSW supports their efforts through these highly respected awards as well as through a range of other initiatives.
“For example, we are leading councils’ call for the NSW Government to fund and help deliver a fresh approach to waste and recycling through our Save Our Recycling campaign.
“LGNSW also partners with State Government to provide the Increasing Resilience to Climate Change program, supporting council projects that make their communities more climate resilient. Applications for Round 3, with $600,000 available, close this week (15 October).”
Excellence in the Environment Awards winners and case studies
