June 3, 2014

Research partnership promotes sustainability at home and at work

A new initiative from UOW and the NSW State Government is looking at ways to improve sustainability in the home and office.

The NSW Office of Environment and Heritage and UOW signed a memorandum of understanding on Monday 2 June, with the aim of encouraging greater environmental sustainability.

The partnership harnesses UOW’s research expertise in environmental sustainability and will help informing the NSW Government’s public policy in this field.

The UOW research team comprises the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research (AUSCCER), the Sustainable Buildings Research Centre (SBRC), and the Global Challenges Program, under the theme of Transforming Lives and Regions.

AUSCCER researchers have considerable experience in household sustainability with a number of projects directed towards making it easier to embrace an ecologically friendly lifestyle while at the same time recognising the challenges involved in this transformation.

SBRC addresses sustainability in our workplaces and homes by retrofitting buildings with new materials to reduce energy consumption.

Professor Lesley Head, Director of AUSCCER, said the partnership between UOW and the Office of Environment and Heritage presented a great opportunity for researchers to make a positive impact on society.

“AUSCCER is delighted at this recognition of our research on household sustainability, and we look forward to working with the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage to explore its implications for policy,” Professor Head said.

Tom Grosskopf, Director of the Metropolitan Branch of the Office of Environment and Heritage, said the Memorandum of Understanding would create new ways for research to inform the NSW Government’s actions.

“The partnership will support the NSW Government to build its programs with the best available knowledge by working with world leaders in household sustainability, the built environment, and renewable energy,” Mr Grosskopf said.

“Our collaboration will help us all to build an energy efficient economy that improves the quality of our lifestyles at home and at work.”

Professor Chris Gibson, Director of the Global Challenges Program, said the initiative would build on UOW’s research strengths to reduce our environmental footprint and overcome the dilemmas posed by increased sustainability.

“The thinking used to be that it’s easy being green, but we’ve realised that it’s actually not so easy to be green,” Professor Gibson said.

“We urgently need to reduce our environmental footprint, but there are many obstacles involved that make it difficult to reduce our consumption. Our whole life is geared towards consumption, in the home, in the office, in the technology we use.

“The partnership between UOW and OEH will help us to translate our research into new policy, and develop projects that will have a transformative impact on environmental sustainability.”