I’m proud council has delivered the Environment Strategy Action Plan 2024-26, which offers transparency and insight into our progress towards important sustainability goals.
This plan highlights our work towards the commitments we adopted in September 2020 in The Environment Strategy 2020-2030.
This strategy outlines five key sustainability goals for the City of Greater Geelong to protect our precious environment and reduce our footprint:
Become a zero-emission climate-ready city region.
Create greener community spaces.
Contribute to a circular economy by reducing waste.
Protect and restore our region’s biodiversity.
Achieve better integrated water management.
The Environment Strategy Action Plan 2024-26 enables us to share the broad scope of works conducted at the City and reflects on the key environmental sustainability outcomes and achievements for 2020-24.
It is encouraging to see that 60 per cent of 2022-23 goals are complete and 94 per cent of longer-term actions are on track for their proposed delivery dates.
One of the fantastic initiatives highlighted in the report is the City’s work in reducing waste at our garden organics composting facility.
Established in 2018, the facility transforms garden and food waste from kerbside collection into nutrient-rich mulch, which is used across City reserves.
In its 2021-23 trial period, the project collected approximately 3.5 tonnes of food waste a week that would have otherwise gone to the tip.
The success of this trial is informing our planning for the future expansion of food waste collection services across our municipality, and it really speaks to the Clever and Creative future in Geelong that we strive for.
Our use of recycled materials in our road construction projects is another innovative action that is paving the way for a bright future in Geelong.
These projects repurpose crushed glass, rubber and recycled plastics into a range of new construction materials, keeping thousands of tonnes of waste out of landfill.
This efficient use of materials also reduces the greenhouse gas emissions of these kinds of road projects by as much as 30 per cent.
The Action Plan also shines a light on the success of the City’s LED Lighting Upgrade Program.
The program has upgraded 22,000 streetlights to high efficiency LED light fittings, significantly reducing the annual electricity consumption of our streetlight network by approximately 60 per cent.
There is still plenty of work to be done to achieve the targets that contribute to our key goals.
Of the 34 targets established in the Environment Strategy, 26 are either completed or are on track to be actioned by their deadline.
The pandemic did impact the progress of some of our targets, and these have been revised in the new action plan – a perfect example of why these two-yearly reports are integral to communicating our progress.
I can only imagine how much more we will have achieved through our sustainability initiatives by the time we release our next action plan, in two years.
