'Green frameworks' aplenty
This blog post is the last in a series of three adapted from a joint presentation at the 2023 Early Childhood Australia Conference in Adelaide by Gavin Jennings & Megan Black (Futuro), and Dan Sheedy (Climate Active) titled 'Intergenerational Equity and the Sustainability Imperative'.
Navigating 'green frameworks' within Australia and can be incredibly challenging as it becomes difficult to differentiate the underlying intent of each tool for the average person and determine which one should be adopted. Green frameworks encompass a wide range of initiatives, including but not limited to green buildings, energy efficiency, and achieving carbon neutrality.
As educational leaders and business, selecting the most appropriate sustainability framework poses challenges. With numerous frameworks available, each with unique focuses and approaches, careful consideration is required. It is important to consider your team's values and goals, available resources, stakeholder engagement and operational compatibility.
What is the best fit?
The fundamental question in selecting a green framework is: What are your desired outcomes and objectives?
During our research on Australia’s 'green frameworks' it became clear that most tools were not designed for or applicable to the childcare sector. It seems our national frameworks are either limited in their reach or designed for large corporations with sizeable balance sheets that can afford the expense associated with implementation.
The most recognised and widely used frameworks are; the Green Building Council of Australia (or Greenstar), NABERS, Climate Active and Greenfleet.
Greenstar
The Green Building Council of Australia offers a holistic rating tool known as 'Greenstar certification'. This tool validates sustainable practices in the development of a physical building. One downside of Greenstar certification is that it does not account for the carbon footprint of an operational business, which will generate more emissions over the life of the centre lease than the physical premises will.
NABERS
The National Australian Built Environment Rating System (or NABERS) measures the environmental performance of buildings within their specific sectors such as hotels, shopping centres, apartments and offices.
It is similar to the energy rating stickers seen on domestic appliances such fridges and washing machines. The NABERS rating helps to accurately measure, understand, and communicate the environmental performance of a building’s energy, water and waste consumption while identifying areas for cost savings and future improvements. A NABERs rating is heavily reliant on the quality of a building’s infrastructure and implementing retrospectively is a difficult to achieve. While the NABERs rating does measure the energy consumed there is no consideration of other operational emissions.
Climate Active
Our last blog post addressed the process for carbon neutral certification through Climate Active. Climate Active has carbon neutral standards for organisations, products, services, events and precincts. The Climate Active framework certifies the actual business's activities as being carbon neutral through the process of measuring, reducing and offsetting carbon footprints. This means that the relevant emissions associated with business operations (for example running a childcare centre) or producing a particular product (for example a box of nappies) have no net negative impact on the climate.
Greenfleet
Greenfleet offsets future carbon with projects such as planting forest and capturing 'future' carbon. Greenfleet’s forests are legally protected and will draw down and capture carbon as they grow. Carbon offsets are different to carbon credits, with carbon credits typically derived from completed projects already completed and certified carbon negative.
So what works best for early learning?
Most of the frameworks canvassed above apply to the construction of a physical building, rather the operation of a business. Unless you are in the process of building a new centre, they will be of fairly limited utility.
The advantage of carbon neutral certification is that it allows operating centres to offset their emissions, whilst investing in carbon negative projects that resonate with that centre's mission, purpose and values. At Futuro, we invested in two carbon negative projects; Mytrah Wind Project and the Orana Park Project. For more info, check out our sustainability page.
As always, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask a member of our friendly team or reach out to us at enquiries@futuro.nsw.edu.au!