Making progress towards a more sustainable and resilient future

Published on 12 August 2024

Sustainability and resilience are essential qualities which will help us all to thrive into the future, and to support that, Council has been making good progress with their Sustainability and Resilience Strategy.

Resilience is often termed as the capacity of a natural system, individual or community to recover successfully from change, challenges or difficulties.

Sustainability is being able to sustain our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Our Sustainability and Resilience Strategy has three key themes - Leadership, Environment and Community - and a series of actions that will benefit the community and the environment by:

• Reducing costs by improving efficiency and living more sustainably
• Supporting renewable energy technologies
• Improving our use of resources
• Raising levels of education and awareness of sustainability issues.

What have we done so far?

1. Joined the Cities Power Partnership: Australia’s largest network of local councils leading the way to a thriving, zero emissions future, giving local government the tools, connections and the momentum to capitalise on the global shift to a clean economy.
2. Ongoing communications (like this!) about environmental sustainability: check out our sustainability page on our website for awesome articles – and subscribe to our quarterly sustainability newsletter.

3. Sustainable procurement training for Council staff: staff who make purchases on behalf of council have been trained to incorporate sustainability in their buying decisions.
4. Retrofitting of all street lighting to LED: 1421 street lights have been switched over to the more energy efficient LED lighting, which not only reduces energy costs, but requires less maintenance.
5. Increase the generation and use of renewable energy across Council assets: projects include the installation of solar panels at the Slim Dusty Centre, the Depot, the Civic Centre, Waste Management Centre, and the Bushfire Control Centre; upgrading lighting at the South West Rocks and Central Kempsey sporting complexes to LED technology; installing solar hot water heating at some tourist parks.
6. Sustainability at home checklists have been developed: download one here or pick one up from Customer Service or at one of our libraries!
7. Facilitate installation of EV chargers for public use: two EV chargers have been installed – one at the Slim Dusty Centre and the other at Back Creek, South West Rocks.

What will we do next?

This year we are looking at climate change and how we can identify the risks, adapt and mitigate the impacts. We are also doing some school-based education programs focused on sustainability, climate reporting, more renewables and EV charging infrastructure.

We will keep you updated on what’s happening: subscribe to Our Backyard, our quarterly sustainability newsletter.