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.

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.

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.

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.

Engineers Australia has selected the ‘Make it so’ idea, which will be made a reality by the engineering profession. It is to ‘make it so’ developing communities can re-use their agricultural waste to create energy for cooking and heating.

Cling wrap that captures CO₂ and a recycling technique for pig waste are two of the research discoveries in this year’s Fresh Science competition. The national competition identifies new and interesting research being done by early-career scientists from around the country and then helps them present their research to the public.

Sustainability and mining are two words that don’t quite seem to fit together. But with evolving social expectations, and under increasing public and media scrutiny, the past decade has seen the mining industry put in a huge effort into sustainable development in order to maintain its ‘social licence to operate’.

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.

Since 2000, the National Packaging Covenant (Covenant) has been an innovative and unique national approach to dealing with packaging waste. It has engaged the packaging supply and recovery chains, governments and community groups. There was a specific target to divert high-embodied energy materials from landfill and through these activities contribute to a reduction in GHG emissions.

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.

The future ISO 50001 standard for energy management was recently approved as a Draft International Standard (DIS).