Banksia Foundation Minister's Award for the Environment Finalists

Australian businesses are emerging as world leaders in tackling environmental challenges with 2019 Banksia Sustainability awards shining the light on some incredible innovation.

I am particularly thrilled to announce the finalists for this year’s Minister's Award for the Environment, which recognises innovative projects of national significance that inspire others to take practical environmental action.

This year’s finalists are addressing projects that reduce and recycle eWaste, protect threatened species through environmental offsets, produce innovative cleaning solutions with low environmental impact, and which encourage the community to reduce plastic waste.

I’ve been extremely impressed by the level of ingenuity and creativity demonstrated by these organisations, and the dedication and commitment of their team members.

The finalists 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.

I congratulate everyone who submitted entries in each of the Banksia Award categories and wish them every success in their future endeavours.

Their enthusiasm and commitment underlines the fact that we can all play a role in protecting the environment through practical, local action.

The Banksia Environmental Foundation was created in 1989 to support and recognise members of the community for their positive contribution to the environment.

The winner will be announced 3 December 2019.