The family owned and operated Jet Park Hotel & Conference Centre has recently been named as the recipient of an Enviro Gold Award. Awarded by Qualmark New Zealand, the Enviro Awards recognise businesses in the NZ hospitality industry that are working to reduce their environmental impact.

Melbourne’s biggest sewage treatment plant, the Western Treatment Plant, has, for the first time, used sewage to produce more than enough biogas to power the entire plant for the last two months.

Kingsley’s Steakhouse & Crabhouse in Woolloomooloo and Chophouse in Sydney CBD both signed up to GreenChef - an energy-efficiency program run by the Green Skills (Aust) Institute. The pilot program, funded by the NSW Government’s Energy Efficiency Training Program, was designed to see how changing behaviour and practices in restaurants would save power - and money. In just seven months, Chophouse reduced its total energy consumption by 14% and Kingsley’s was reduced by 5%.

Rockwell Automation recently hosted the ‘Innovations for Smart, Safe, Sustainable Automation Solutions in the Water Industry’ forum in Adelaide in May. The event was well attended by consulting engineers, water utility companies, government departments and system integrators, and topics discussed included innovations for automation, information, power and safety solutions for the water industry.

The Australian government has announced plans to introduce a carbon price mechanism from 1 July 2012. There will be a three-year fixed price period. The carbon price will start at $23 per tonne in 2012-13 and will be $24.15 in 2013-14 and $25.40 in 2014-15. From 1 July 2015 onwards, the carbon price will be set by the market. Under the plan, Australia will cut 159 million tonnes a year of carbon pollution from its atmosphere by 2020 - the equivalent of taking over 45 million cars off the road. In the article below, Elisa de Wit, Anthony Hobley, Noni Shannon and Dominic Adams from law firm Norton Rose Australia outline the impact of the carbon pricing mechanism on businesses.

I’ll tell you a not-so-secret secret that I have been telling colleagues, students, industry representatives and governments for years: everything is sustainable.

Salacia Waters, one of the largest urban developments on the Gold Coast, Queensland, is setting regional benchmarks in both community planning and environmental responsibility.

Why is it that in the world’s driest continent we continue to throw away one of our most abundant water sources that goes right past our doors? Stormwater, we tend to ignore it until it runs through our houses or overflows our streets and then we only see it as a nuisance, but, for a more sustainable future, we need to reacquaint ourselves with the forgotten cousin of the water cycle.

Effluent should be recycled back into brewery operations with less reticence than is currently the case says Dr Bernard Talbot, Director, Talbot & Talbot, London. In this article he discusses how the use of properly treated effluent can present the brewer with a safe option and greater security of supply.

In the last two years, since the initiation of moves by the federal government to move back into national policy on waste and recycling, the various state and territory jurisdictions have themselves lifted their focus up a notch also. It’s an interesting reflection on the positive influence an interested federal government can have on state and territory policy activity and the important role national government can play in co-ordinating state- and territory-based action.

New research shows Australia’s renewable energy share has been declining since 1960 and Mark Wakeham from Environment Victoria says without a price on carbon, our economy will continue with ‘pollution as usual’.

In April 2011, two major players in Australia’s corporate landscape switched on a system to generate lower-emissions electricity at Coca-Cola Place in North Sydney and share its benefits with Deutsche Bank Place across the harbour. The NSW Minister for Resources and Energy, Hon Chris Hartcher, MP, officially launched the trigeneration precinct for these two commercial buildings.

Organisations must embed environmental sustainability as a core strategy to remain competitive and survive the next 20 years, according to global accounting body ACCA.

A new and positive era of environmental policy has arrived with the passing of the Product Stewardship Bill by both Houses of Parliament in Canberra on 22 June. The Product Stewardship Bill 2011 will provide powers to ensure that waste minimisation and recycling are mandated on a national basis. This includes using materials more sustainably across priority product categories, industry sectors and waste streams.

The federal government will provide more than three quarters of a billion dollars to help build two of the largest solar power stations in the world.