Meet our first Pledgers

We're thrilled that so many wonderful organisations, businesses and government agencies have already signed up and taken GECA's Positive Procurement Pledge!

Our Pledgers have agreed to develop, document and implement a Positive Procurement Policy by 31 December 2020, and are committed to following and implementing a more sustainable future. Check out who has signed on to the Pledge so far!

Will you join them?

GECA is here to support your sustainable procurement journey and will help to share your Positive Procurement Pledge actions with your employees and customers. Pledgers will gain exclusive access to networking events, promotional activities, toolkit webinars and other support. We can also organise consulting advice to help you on your procurement path.

Find out more and get involved

Webinar: Integrating sustainability into procurement policies

Hear from the experts who participated in the development of the new ISO20400 Sustainable Procurement standard in this webinar, which will help you identify ways to capture the many opportunities open to organisations around sustainable procurement.These opportunities include:

using procurement power to achieve innovation and positive outcomes for the community
demonstrating good corporate citizenship to important stakeholders
reducing costs of goods and services procured by the organisation (value for money)
avoiding reputational damage that may arise from unsustainable practices such as modern slavery, use of child labour or environmental issues in the supply chain.

View the webinar here

Hear about the Pledge at GovProcure 2017

Come and hear from GECA's Kim Andrews and Shaila Divakarla at this year's GovProcure conference as part of over two days of conference sessions and a full day of in-depth sessions.

Over 25 procurement experts will help you deliver better outcomes for your organisation by giving you insights into leading case studies and evolving best practices.

Hear from Kim Andrews as she introduces how the Positive Procurement Pledge will benefit your organisation. “Business leaders now understand that there’s a whole spectrum of concrete benefits, ranging from building resilience, future-proofing your organisation, managing sustainability risks and getting ahead of future regulatory requirements,” Andrews says.

5-7 December, Sydney

ISO 20400 Melbourne Launch: Recap

The ISO 20400 Australian Mirror Committee, in coordination with Sustainability Victoria, Procurement Australia, Transurban and Social Traders, organised a launching event entitled 'Hear from early users of the first standard on sustainable procurement (ISO 20400)'. Watch a recap of the event via YouTube.

Freshly recertified

ACCO Brands and DLH Solutions have recently renewed their GECA certification, demonstrating their ongoing commitment to having a lower environmental, health and social impact!

ACCO Brands Australia currently supplies both the retail and commercial sectors with over 10,000 product lines for use in the home, office and school, including their GECA certified range of Northfork cleaning solutions. Each product has been designed with the consumer in mind.

DLH Solutions' main product offering, Eco-Red, is certified under GECA’s Cleaning Products standard. The product is designed to have a unique method of action to continually lift and clean away oil. It is described as being a “completely safe, all-purpose cleaner”.

Plasticity Sydney in review

In October this year, at Plasticity Sydney (a global conference focused on plastic sustainability), businesses called for a broader discussion on used plastic as a resource and identified three key steps: place a value on the material, encourage design-for-recovery, and foster end-markets to create demand.

GECA's Marketing Manager, Paula Clasby, said that Plasticity Sydney was a "wonderful event". "There were fantastic speakers and topics that sparked conversation addressing the challenges and some very inspiring and innovative solutions," she said.

GECA's Kate Harris spoke at the event about the importance of making good environmental choices. You can sign up to view speaker notes from the day here, with videos of each presentation coming soon.

See the speaker notes here

Green Globe Award Winners

Congratulations to the winners of this year's Green Globe Awards! A diverse range of innovative projects from across the state have been highlighted in this year’s winning line-up.

Office of Environment and Heritage Chief Executive Anthony Lean said the varied projects are helping ensure NSW builds the most sustainable future possible.

“I’m inspired by the pioneering projects and the dedicated people and organisations across our state who are committed to driving us towards a better future for our planet and the next generation," Mr Lean said.

Sustainability Award Winners

Architecture & Design's Sustainability Awards Gala on 26 October was a showcase of some of the industry's most impressive sustainable projects in architecture and design.

The night was hosted by Tony Arnel and Adele Bates at Doltone House, Darling Island Wharf. After months of painstaking scrutiny, the Sustainability Awards judging panel whittled down a shortlist of 45 finalists to 12 deserving winners.

Gen Y Housing by David Barr Architects won the 'Best of the Best' category for tackling the hardest issues: social sustainability and land use. Congratulations to all of the winners!

Banksia Award Winners

The Banksia Sustainability awards are run by the Banksia Foundation, which has been bringing together the most innovative and effective people in sustainability in Australia and are Australia’s leading sustainability awards and the longest running Awards of this nature in the world.

“After 29 years of rewarding excellence in sustainability, it is becoming clear that more and more organisations and individuals simply ‘get it’, and are implementing sustainability into their processes themselves,” comments Banksia’s CEO Graz van Egmond.

Keo Films' 'War on Waste' documentary series took out the highest Banksia Sustainability honour in Australia, the Gold Banksia Sustainability Award which recognises the ‘best of the best’ of all Banksia Sustainability award winners in 2017. Congratulations to all the winners of this year's Banksia Awards!

See all the winners here

'Tomorrowland' eBook now available

For those who missed out or if you'd like to re-live and read more on the topics covered at Tomorrowland, you can view Fifth Estate's ebook, a creation from the event looking at buildings of the future - covering technology, robotics, driverless cars, new and old materials and what investors like and don't like. The ebook also includes embedded videos of some of the presentations from the day, so you can get a sense of the action.

Get the eBook here!

Farewell Matthew Kolisnyk

This month we said goodbye to Matthew Kolisnyk, our Standards and Technical Officer, who has moved into a new role in local government. As well as supporting the rest of GECA's Standards team, Matthew worked significantly on the development of GECA's Waste Collection Services standard, which will be launched early next year.

We wish Matthew all the best in his new role and thank him for his time at GECA!