Outback Australia will be an additional focus for Clean Up Australia's activities next year.

Australian designer and manufacturer of water pump and pressure systems, Davey Products has acquired the New Zealand-based water treatment company, Contamination Control.

A wave energy generator has been positioned on the sea floor off Fremantle, Western Australia to start trial production of electricity and fresh water with no fossil fuel input.

During March, the Steel Can Recycling Council and Coles Supermarkets ran a promotional campaign to boost the levels of awareness among consumers of the recyclability of steel packaging.

New figures released in a Planet Ark report commissioned by the Australian government have revealed that Australians have cut their plastic bag habit by 1.34 billion bags a year. However, they are still using 5.58 billion plastic checkout bags a year.

A seven-metre tall figure composed of three tonnes of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) has been installed at South Bank, London.

The first national 'Butt Free City - Please Butt It, Then Bin It' campaign is asking smokers to help reduce the seven billion littered butts that hit Australian footpaths, gutters and waterways every year.

Syft Technologies, producer of advanced SIFT-MS analytical solutions for large-scale identification and analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), has signed a significant export order with Australian Customs Services (Customs) to supply five Voice100 instruments to ports in Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth. The order is worth in excess of NZ$2m and is to be delivered by June 2005.

In a move that reflects its positioning in the brave new no-waste world of sustainable resource management, Waste Service NSW has changed its name to WSN Environmental Solutions.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has allowed a group of Sydney councils to collectively tender and contract for the provision of waste manage-ment services.

The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) is one of the first Australian government agencies to publish a corporate social responsibility (CSR) report.

Over the next few years, industry is likely to see some evolutionary changes to the biodegradable plastic based on corn starch developed by Plantic Technologies.

Research on stakeholder perceptions com-missioned by the Buy Recycled Business Alliance (BRBA) has found that 74% or 17 of the 24 members surveyed have an environ-mental committee for buying products that contain recycled materials.

The winner of our first draw of the 6 GB, 1500 song iPod Mini is Ann Perkins of Roche Mining in Queensland. Congratulations Ann.

Curtin University of Technology and the Western Australian Water Corporation have combined to establish a water research centre at the university.