Welcome to How green is my council?

- for metro Perth, Western Australia

The 2009 UPDATE was launched at 10am, TUESDAY 4 AUGUST
@ the new Environment House, 125 King William St Bayswater, 6053.

HowGreen is my council was first launched in October 2006, and updated in Nov 2007 with help from tertiary sustainability students and Council staff. In late 2008, revision of the actual questionnaire was begun and officers at the City of Perth suggested that we split the one questionnaire into two:
1. Council-Community interface   2. Councils' Corporate efforts at eco-sustainability.
This idea gained traction and has now been implemented; it was extra work for all concerned, but we think the results should prove more useful for a) residents b) Council staff and Councillors.

Your HowGreen crew for 2009 consists of four of the original crew (our brilliant and cheerful programmer Chuan/Dennis Tan, plus Nella di Marco, Jo Bower and me) - plus our 2009 Murdoch postgrad. sustainability student Nicola Mincham and the hardworking enviro/sustainability officers of 29 of Perth's 30 Councils. (South Perth did not return our survey this year, though they are doing some great sustainability work.)

The detailed responses from each council are published in full on the site. The SNAPSHOT CHARTS (both for Community and Corporate questionnaires) are intended as quick overviews as to who is doing what. Please note that the green ticks cannot meaningfully be 'scored'; some Q's are not applicable in some areas and some green ticks carry more environmental 'weight' than others. The map is another way to have a quick overview, but only works for the Community questionnaire at present.

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 patch. We aim to maintain this site as a user-friendly tool for residents, councillors and staff of Perth's metro municipalities  - supporting us all in our efforts to improve the environmental sustainability performance of our Councils. Our site recognises 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.  (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.

Also, although policies and strategies are of course essential forerunners of changes on the ground, we have chosen to display ticks only for initiatives that have actually been put into practice. We hope you all make good use of our little site!

Brenda Conochie for the HowGreen Team, www.environmenthouse.org.au, 

now based at 125 King William St Bayswater WA, 6053, Tel 92714488 

howgreen@environmenthouse.org.au July 2009