With around 70 per cent of its area either a national park or nature reserve, residents of Hornsby Shire are right behind Council’s Earthwise program.
Speaking at the recent Local Government Managers Australia NSW annual conference, Julie Ryland, Manager Environmental Sustainability and Health, said that Earthwise is the branding Hornsby has applied to its triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability program. TBL considerations are now firmly embedded in all Council’s decision making processes.
“TBL takes into account the economic, environmental and social implications, and is built into all our reports to Councillors,” Julie Ryland said. “It has been an evolving process, and rather from starting from scratch we looked at the approaches other organisations had taken in moving to TBL, learning from their mistakes and building on their successes.”
Hornsby’s crossdivisional TBL working group is driving the Earthwise program. This multidisciplinary working group established a TBL policy and then ensured it was incorporated into Council’s Management Plan.
The group ran training sessions on TBL principles and established a TBL checklist to assist staff in incorporating TBL into their policymaking and project development.
“The TBL checklist ensures that reports look at the various elements of sustainability,” Julie Ryland said.
She said that Executive support was vital, with the TBL policy being endorsed by Council’s Executive team and Council.
“Ongoing training is important but we now need to do this again with new staff being appointed, and following the recent elections a number of new Councillors have come on board,” she said. “TBL relies on us continually challenging people for new ideas and pushes for continual improvements.”
She listed the key lessons that Hornsby has learnt as:
- being consistent
- building on existing
documentation and policies - ensuring the journey is
incremental, with small steps at a time - applying for awards as
recognition for effort helps
to drive the process.
She said that it is useful to identify champions within your organisation, the Local Government sector and private sector; encourage new ideas and different perspectives; and use independent evaluation. Hornsby Shire worked with the University of Western Sydney to evaluate its progress.
For further information contact Julie Ryland on
(02) 9847 6666.
