The Rudd government’s budget has been slammed by the Liberal party as letting Australian families down, but has it let down business and the environment? With billions of dollars promised to help combat climate change, how has the money been spent and how will it affect business? Presented below is a summary of the budget initiatives that are aimed to work with Australian businesses to help tackle climate change.

For Australia's economy to be sustainable, nation-building investment is critical, but the Rudd/Swan budget didn't deliver on sustainability, according to UniSA academic, Dr Geoffrey Wells.

According to the organisers of the 2008 NZIFST conference which will be held in June in Rotorua, New Zealand, many people in the food industry are confused about what food sustainability means and how they can put it into practice.

In a world first, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has approved the creation of a project committee mandated to develop an international standard on energy management.

In recent times the sustainability sector has seen a massive surge in investments in green companies and products, from both the big end of town and smaller investors

Electric motor minimum energy performance standards (MEPS) are now well established across Australia

Ferguson Plarre Bakehouses, a family company and Melbourne institution for more than a century, has built one of the country's greenest, most environmentally sustainable bakeries at Keilor Park

A small audience of the general public listened to two of Australia's most prominent scientists discuss how the economic costs of trying to reach the 2050 carbon reduction targets of 60% would come at a very small cost to the wider community

The first stages of d'VineRipe's $30 million truss tomato glasshouse at Two Wells, South Australia, has opened. The glasshouse is owned by Victor Smorgon Group and agribusiness investment manager, Timbercorp Limited

In a recent report issued by Austrade, demand for green building technology is on the rise in China, with the country expected to be home to half the world's building construction between now and 2020

The Department of Environment & Climate Change in NSW runs a program for businesses called Sustainability Advantage, which it believes makes sense of all of the noise about sustainability

According to Wikipedia, greenwash is the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service

HydroShare is a web-based water consumption monitoring system which monitors actual use, trend and water flow in real time which means that water leaks can be identified immediately and repaired faster

"New discoveries in microbiology and nanotechnology applied to reverse osmosis (RO) membrane technology will allow increased energy efficiency of desalination and water recycling plants around the world", said Dr David Garman

A UK water-company project is using natural elements such as bark, wood chips, seaweed and seashells lining water-filled tanks to provide a solution to a smelly problem - the unpleasant odour that can come from wastewater treatment works