Ormiston Road Senior College in Auckland, due for completion in October 2010, was recently awarded a 5 Star Green Star rating by the independent Green Building Council of New Zealand. A total of 68 points were achieved overall, six points shy of a 6 Star rating. The use of Windcatchers allowed the college to secure one point for Green Star Innovation.

ABB flowmeters have enabled a US university to cut steam losses in its generation plant and recover more than $1.25 million a year in lost revenues. The solution has also created a campus-wide awareness of the need for energy efficiency.

Commercial products and services can now gain Australia-wide recognition for their water saving attributes through Australia’s water saving scheme, Smart Approved WaterMark, which has broadened its parameters to assess commercially oriented claims.

Adelaide Resource Recovery (ARR) operates from Adelaide’s Wingfield Recycling Centre and is receiving regular enquiries from businesses in Hong Kong and China that are keen to buy SA’s waste plastic.

Plasback is a product stewardship program that is run by Tapex, a supplier of fodder conservation plastics. The program currently recycles waste silage wrap, pit covers, grain tubes and twine for farmers. It works with partner recyclers in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney that reprocess the plastic waste and give it a second use as plastic pellets which can be remoulded into plywood sheets called Tuffboard and Tuffdeck.

Adelaide-based GTL Energy (GTLE) has announced the completion of construction and commissioning of its coal upgrading plant module near South Heart, North Dakota in the US. The GTLE Dakota plant is a single-module, commercial-scale plant which has been designed to provide proof of the GTLE technology for coal consumers and producers. The company intends to increase both the length and volumes of production runs through the remainder of 2010.

Mars Petcare Australia has implemented a customised compressed-air system from Champion Compressors, optimising production, reliability and energy efficiency.

RSL Care’s Sunset Ridge Retirement Community in Zilzie, near Rockhampton, is securing a sustainable environment for its residents by installing one of the first Aquacell greywater treatment plants in Queensland.

With south-east Queensland schools reeling from recent double-digit water price hikes, many school business managers are looking for a way to help ‘futureproof’ their facilities against similar water price rises in subsequent years.

If you own or lease office space, then you need to know about the new Commercial Building Disclosure scheme (CBD) beginning 1 November this year. CBD will require office buildings to disclose their NABERS Energy ratings when they are offered for sale or lease.

A leading Australian materials scientists who invented a zero waste technology for the plastics and car industry has been awarded the prestigious 2010 Victoria Prize. Associate Professor Wojciech Gutowski’s work addressed the waste problem faced by the car industry which uses 9.68 million litres of paints a year in car manufacturing - with all solvents used in the process becoming airborne and 2.5 million litres of solids going to landfill.

The Plastiki, a 60-foot (18.2 m) catamaran made from plastic bottles, sailed into Sydney Harbour on Monday 26 July. Designed to raise awareness of the amount of plastic waste in the ocean and plant the seed in everyone’s mind to think about minimising waste and re-using materials intelligently, the Plastiki expedition is the creation of adventurer and environmentalist David de Rothschild and his organisation, Adventure Ecology.

Monitoring and controlling the amount of organic matter in our streams and waterways is critical for environmental protection. Total organic carbon (TOC) is the amount of carbon present in an organic compound and measuring it provides a fast and convenient way to determine water quality. This article looks at the different methods now available for analysing TOC.

As the 2009/10 financial year comes to a close, corporations are busy with their financial reporting requirements. The end of the fiscal year also signifies the approach of greenhouse gas and energy reporting deadlines under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 (NGER Act), where corporations over a certain size are required to report their emissions and energy by 31 October.

As a country which has continually had to deal with the scarcity of water, Australia is ideally placed to become a leader in the US$400 billion global water market. But a detailed analysis of our water innovation patents has found Australian companies are failing to leverage their valuable intellectual property (IP) into global markets.