Awards Shine Light On Sustainability
Showcasing some of the Aussies who shine the most when it comes to sustainability, Victoria has announced its 20 finalists for the 2013 Premier’s Sustainability Awards – and the winners are set to be announced in October.
The awards have been running for eleven years now, having been designed to celebrate Aussies making waves in how we use water, energy and resources. As well as this, it recognises those trailblazers in waste management and recycling.
Categories for awards include infrastructure and building, environmental protection, community, household recycling, education and more, with contenders coming from a wide range of backgrounds and disciplines. The thing that links them together? Sustainability, and a recognition of its importance in Australia and around the world.
Some of the projects the finalists have pioneered include a climate watch mobile phone app, a family-owned business that has installed the second-largest privately owned solar power system and a university initiative that aims to increase student awareness of sustainability in the engineering sector. These diverse entries show the scope of the kind of environmental initiatives going on around the country.
How this relates to you
Think about what some of these sustainability awards groups and individuals are doing, and ask yourself if you can incorporate any of these ideas into your own life or community.
For example through some of the waste and recycling initiatives that others have implemented, you might learn how make better use of objects in the home. This might involve something like using reusable shopping bags and sandwich wraps, rather than using their single-use, throwaway equivalent.
You might be inspired to reduce your electricity use around the home, conserve water or volunteer for your local tree planting organisation.
No matter how you integrate sustainability into your life, you are making the world a slightly more clean and green place. You may even be inspiring others to do the same.
