This project aims to develop an environmental sustainability reporting program to assist the six partner Council’s in reporting against environmental sustainability strategies, plans and investments.

An embedded environmental sustainability reporting program is needed as current local, state and national reporting platforms do not capture the full value of environmental sustainability work achieved. Once embedded into Council processes, the reporting program will assist in benchmarking environmental sustainability performance across the region, identify areas for improvement and drive positive change within the six partner Council’s.

This project has allowed Council to understand the complexity with ‘standardising’ a reporting framework across a number of local government’s as each Council is unique in terms of resources and capacity to collate, report, and interpret data. We found that the best approach was to identify a set of desired environmental sustainability indicators in which each Council can work toward reporting against over a designated time frame. Furthermore,
continued communication and sharing of resources will be crucial in making sure the achievements of this project are embedded within Council processes.