Abstract

Three surveys were conducted to determine uptake and/or implementation of environmental sustainability in Australia. A questionnaire was distributed to all of Australia’s cooperative research centres (CRC’s), and two university-based centres with an environmental sustainability focus, to evaluate implementation of environmental sustainability practises across Australia, especially in industries involving biotechnology in its broadest sense. Seventeen of the CRC’s (a 35% response rate) and both ‘“sustainability” centres responded, with between eleven and fourteen CRC’s indicating, using examples, that they conducted sustainable practises according to one or more of the three versions of environmental sustainability published elsewhere, as did both university-based centres. A previously published sustainability model was tested regionally in Latrobe Valley, Victoria using an open-ended questionnaire to eleven senior representatives from local and state government, academia, the main local natural resource-based industries and NGO’s. These managers commented on the model’s suitability in its current form and on ways that it could be improved for practical application at regional, state and/or national levels. At the state level, a semi-quantitative telephone survey was used to determine cleaner production uptake by 140 small to medium enterprises (SME’s) in Western Australia. All the above instruments had a mixture of simple and open-ended questions and gave insight into the extent of environmental sustainability practises and attitudes in Australia while supplying suggestions on how they could be enhanced. These will be discussed in this paper as will a proposed new innovation model that incorporates stakeholder comments.