Plastic and eWaste recyclers among Banksia Awards finalists

Finalists have been announced for the 2019 Banksia Sustainability Awards, with a winner to be announced on December 3.

The finalists were named by federal environment minister Sussan Ley on Thursday. The awards recognise projects of national significance, and this year’s nominees include plastic and eWaste recycling initiatives.

The organisations are

• Substation 33 (QLD) – for successfully combining their eWaste recycling venture with a socially-focused initiative that aims to improve social disadvantage by providing skills training and experience to foster positive vocational outcomes for at-risk youths and the long-term unemployed.

• City of Gold Coast (QLD) – for its successful work in koala habitat restoration under its External Environmental Offset Program. In partnership with Energex Queensland, it successfully identified sites suitable for restoration as koala habitat, before carrying out almost five years of restoration work that involved the direct planting of more than 96,000 plants across 21.9 hectares. Of the 96,000 plants, approximately 56,000 are known koala habitat trees which has been deemed a great success.

• eWater Sustainable Hygiene Systems (VIC) – for establishing a system that produces cleaning and sanitising solutions onsite without the use of synthetic chemicals, resulting in little or no impact to the environment.

• Plastic Free Foundation Ltd (WA) – for exponentially growing Plastic Free July from its humble beginnings in 2011 that involved 40 participants in Western Australia to a global movement in 2019, with an estimated 230 million people taking up the challenge.

Picture: Banksia Foundation

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