Sustainability Skills

Learn about sustainability

What is sustainability?

Business sustainability is a goal for most enterprises. As a micro business owner you may want to sustain an income to retirement or to hand over a viable business to your family. You might be involved in a larger company which has a responsibility … More

Skills and qualifications

Skills and qualifications for sustainability

Sustainability skills Sustainability is recognised as a key driver for new directions within manufacturing enterprises and across the entire value stream. Manufacturing Skills Australia has identified key areas of skills that can support the … More

Sustainability skills resources

Sustainability skills resources

The resources will help Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) and enterprises to design and deliver effective skills development programs for sustainability. They are intended as one source of information about the breadth and complexity of … More

Living Sustainably: the Australian Government’s National Action Plan for Education for Sustainability

Living Sustainably: the Australian Government's National Action Plan for Education for Sustainability sets out a framework for national action that adopts four strategies to respond to the needs and priorities of education for sustainability. 'Demonstrating Australian Government leadership' aims to strengthen the government's leadership role in education for sustainability as an exemplar for change through its own policies, programs and operations and by promoting system-wide change through … [Read more...]

TAESUS501A Analyse and apply sustainability skills to learning programs

TAESUS501A Analyse and apply sustainability skills to learning programs is a unit of competency from the TAE10 Training and Education Training Package. It describes the performance outcomes, skills and knowledge required to identify explicit and embedded sustainability skills within training packages and accredited courses, and apply requirements to learning programs associated with the development of competence. This unit forms the Sustainable Practice Skill Set within the TAE10 Training and … [Read more...]

ABnote case study

ABnote identified several strategies to support sustainability in their facility design and management, providing energy and water savings of up to $22,000 at one plant. These included: Ensuring that evaporative air conditioning units are working properly Installing water-efficient fixtures in new plants Sensor systems for lighting and environmental controls Upgrading toilets to dual flush Installing rainwater tanks installed for non-drinking water use ‘Green teams’ doing audits to … [Read more...]

Oxford Cold Storage water capture initiative

Oxford Cold Storage uses 200 kilolitres of water every day for their evaporative cooling systems. With concerns about long term water supply and threat of price increases they applied for funding from the Australian Industry Group for a feasibility study to ascertain how water could be sourced from roofs and plant buildings. The study showed that 62% of potable water needs could be met by capturing water from the two roof areas (based on average yearly rainfall) saving almost $26,000 in … [Read more...]

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The Australian Ecolabel Program

The Australian Ecolabel Program, managed by Good Environmental Choice Australia (GECA), is based on the international standard ISO 14024: "Environmental Labels and Declarations - Guiding Principles" which requires environmental labeling specifications to include criteria that are objective, reasonable and verifiable. The program has developed a number of voluntary standards for ‘environmentally preferable products’, based on a life cycle assessment approach to environmental performance … [Read more...]

National Waste Policy: Less waste more resources

The policy has a number of strategies for how govenments will support improved waste management and resource recovery. These include the Australian Packaging Covenant and proposed national product stewardship legislation. The aims of the National Waste Policy are to: avoid the generation of waste, reduce the amount of waste (including hazardous waste) for disposal manage waste as a resource ensure that waste treatment, disposal, recovery and re-use is undertaken in a safe, scientific … [Read more...]

National Pollutant Inventory reporting requirements (NPI)

Businesses have to report on their emissions and waste transfers if they trip the reporting thresholds which are defined for 93 substances, rates of burning waste and fuel and the rate and type of electricity usage. A series of Emission Estimation Technique (EET) manuals have been developed for each reporting industry. These outline the industry processes, various methods for estimating emissions and equations for converting different types of measurement. The full list of manuals is … [Read more...]

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National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS)

From 1 July 2010 Australia has a National Carbon Offset Standard (NCOS) to encourage businesses to offset their greenhouse-gas emissions in a voluntary carbon market. It provides a voluntary standard for businesses to use in becoming carbon neutral and in developing carbon neutral products. It also includes guidance on calculating the carbon footprint of an organisation or product and product life cycle analysis for the purpose of achieving ‘carbon neutrality’. Only emissions sources that … [Read more...]

ISO 14000 Set:2005 Environmental Management Standards set

The ISO 14000 family of standards addresses various aspects of environmental management which aims to control and improve the environmental performance of an organisation as measured against objectives. The standards are voluntary. The family of standards includes: ISO 1400 1 :2004  Environmental Management Systems  (requirements) ISO 14004:2004  Environmental Management  Systems (guidelines) ISO 14050:2009 Environmental management - Vocabulary ISO 14040:2006 Environmental … [Read more...]

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This website and many of the products have been produced with the assistance of funding provided by the Australian Government; including through the Green Skills Agreement and the Clean Energy and Other Skills Package.