Welcome to How green is my council?- for metro Perth, Western Australia Sorry, we are currently updating our website with the help of hard-working Perth metro Council environment & sustainability officers, and our voluntary Howgreen team. Please check this site out again on TUESDAY 14 JULY, 2009, when we will be launching the 2009 update. Howgreen was launched in October 2006, and was updated in Nov 2007 with help from tertiary sustainability students and the hardworking Council enviro and sustainability officers who somehow made time to respond. The questionnaire itself has just been revised Dec08-Feb09 with input invited from all over town. So now in April-May 2009, Council officers are being asked to respond to this new survey, to enable us to update their entries on this site. Your howgreen crew for 2009 consist of three of the original crew - programmer Dennis Tan, Nella di Marco and me (Brenda Conochie) plus our 2009 Murdoch graduate intern, Nicola Mincham.Thanks to WALGA for help with publicity and circulation amongst the vital partners in this Project, the hardworking enviro/sustainability officers of Perth's Councils. By the way, we haven't forgotten the many requests from beyond the metro area to be included; we're looking for ways to do this. The Howgreen team believes that every local government has enormous potential to affect - for good or ill - our planet's air, soil, water, biodiversity and climate, from its own little patch. We hope that this site will be a user-friendly tool for residents, councillors and staff of the 30 Perth metro municipalities who care deeply about what we are leaving to future generations - supporting us all in our efforts to improve the environmental sustainability performance of our Councils. Our aim is to recognise Local Governments’ efforts to protect the environment, while also drawing attention to gaps and – we hope - raising the bar to encourage further innovation and best practice. The Comparison Chart and the map are intended as quick overviews as to who is doing what; however please note that the green ticks cannot meaningfully be 'scored'; some Q's are not applicable in some areas and some practices carry more environmental 'weight' than others. The detailed responses from each council are published in full on the site, and we are trying to get Councils to respond afresh, and in more detail, before the end of the year.Policies and strategies are important steps along the way to implementing changes on the ground. While we cannot show which policies and strategies have been fully implemented, we ask Local Governments to detail which initiatives have actually become practices. Brenda Conochie for the the HowGreen Team, www.environmenthouse.org.au, now based at 125 King William St Bayswater WA, 6053, Tel 92714488 howgreen@environmenthouse.org.au May 2009 |
|
