The City of Greater Geelong has won the overall Keep Victoria Beautiful 2021 Sustainable City award, along with three other awards for clever and creative projects that save energy, reduce waste and protect the environment.
The annual awards program celebrates action on climate change and initiatives to protect local environments.
City Project Award winners
- Zero Carbon Buildings Program (Energy Award): The program has reduced the ecological and carbon footprint of the City’s community facilities, through renewable energy generation and energy efficiency improvements. Measures include rooftop solar systems, energy efficient lighting upgrades, automated building control systems and upgraded heating and cooling systems.
- Ramblers Road Artificial Reef (Environment Award): The award-winning coastal protection solution has been effective in preventing further erosion, limiting the over topping of waves and stabilising and widening the beach at Ramblers Road, Portarlington. It has also delivered co-benefits in terms of habitat creation and restoration of seagrass.
- Recycled Roads (Waste Award): The City’s innovative road construction projects incorporate materials collected via their kerbside recycling services. The first roads built using crushed glass as a replacement for sand are now open and other road construction projects have been completed using PlastiPhalt, which incorporates plastics destined for landfill in road construction materials. These projects are keeping tonnes of glass and plastics out of landfill and the highly efficient construction process is reducing project CO2 emissions by as much as 30 percent.
- Community Green Achiever Award: Andrea Dennett from Bellarine Friends of the Hooded Plover was recognised at the awards with the 2021 Community Green Achiever Award for her work to protect threatened bird life.
Other finalists in the community award category from our region include:
- Mik Aidt – Climate Emergency Declaration Campaign (Education Award) – highly commended
- Geelong Sustainability – Sustainable House Day 2020 (Education Award)
- Friends of Waurn Ponds Creek – Waurn Ponds Creek Restoration (Environment Award)
- Lids 4 Kids – Saving Plastic Lids from Landfill (Waste Award)
Bella Wiyn Birralee Family Centre was also highly commended by the judges for its Sustainability Champions of Tomorrow program.
Full details of the Keep Victoria Beautiful Sustainable Cities Awards are available at Sustainable Cities – Keep Victoria Beautiful.
Mayor Stephanie Asher
We’re thrilled to win the overall Sustainable Cities Award because it recognises how hard we’re working to keep the Greater Geelong region sustainable and liveable.
Our community wants to see the City proactively showing leadership to reduce our environmental impact, prevent waste, and protect our world-class biodiversity.
These projects are good for the environment but also make economic sense over the long-term. Whether it’s using crushed glass to build roads, putting solar on City facilities, or installing an artificial reef at Portarlington, we’re leading the way on sustainability action at the local government level.
Andrea Dennett has shown real leadership and commitment over almost 14 years to nurture and care for threatened birds and protect our precious coastal habitat
Andrea has brought people together and shown we all have a part to play in protecting our beloved Hoodies.
