Inspiration for Impact in the Next Financial Year

Image: Burwood Brickworks courtesy Frasers Property Australia

We asked our Strategic Partners what achievements they were most proud of in FY21-22 and if they had any tips to help plan for setting green financial goals in the year ahead. 

Image: GH Commercial at a Take3 clean up event

We are challenging ourselves to design, manufacture and distribute innovative products with reduced environmental and social impacts, and part of that is undertaking our own initiatives and partnering with not-for-profit organisations today, for a better tomorrow. Some of those that we’ve supported include: 

• Take 3 For the Sea 
• Give Where You Live Foundation
• Purpose & Growth
• Envision 
• Samaritan House Geelong
• Geelong YMCA
• Salvation Army
• MS Australia
• Hope Hub
• Flying Fox

We aim to make decisions based on their material and non-material impact on our sustainability and operational strategies. Setting green financial goals in any environment is no small feat – and should be considered a top priority for organisations as they transition to a more regenerative future. With that transition comes a wealth of opportunities. Impedingly can also bring about significant liabilities if actions for tomorrow are not considered today.

A few tips for setting green financial goals in FY2022-23:

Identification – Consolidate your organisation’s objectives, both financial and operational and identify where your ‘green’ goals fit into the timeline of these organisational objectives. ‘Green’ goals should ideally shape the core value of any sustainability strategy. 

Research – Research, research, research! Any decision-maker should be aware of the evolving factors influencing the transition to a greener economy. 

Action – When implementing any green financial goal, it is imperative that the goal has been based not only on today’s events but considers the impact of tomorrow.

– Lachlan Howell, Corporate Sales & Sustainability Coordinator

Learn more about GH Commercial

We’ve focused on creating sustainable precincts and investing in the transition of our assets to a low-carbon economy, and we’re proud to leverage our green credentials to deliver our inaugural Green Bond.

“Vicinity is an industry leader in sustainability, and we are pleased to leverage our green credentials to deliver our inaugural Green Bond issuance. Our commitment to creating sustainable precincts and our significant investment in transitioning our assets to a low carbon economy, over a number of years, has been recognised by investors as part of this issuance.”

– Mr Grant Kelley, CEO and Managing Director

Learn more about Vicinity Centres

As engineers and sustainability consultants, ADP plays a key role in driving regenerative design within our industry, advising on what is cultural, social and environmental best practice.

Our experience includes Petal Certified Burwood Brickworks – the world’s sustainable shopping centre, Chadstone Place – anticipated to be Australia’s first certified ILFI Zero Carbon building and St. Ives Cultural and Environmental Education Centre, targeting LBC Certification. We are passionate about the work we do and apply our lessons learnt and the philosophy of LBC to all our projects.

In 2022 we are taking a more regenerative approach to how we operate.

Our Melbourne office recently moved to 55 Collins Street, an excellent location for amenities and access to public transport. We adopted a circular economy strategy by re-using, repurposing and reconfiguring existing joinery and upcycled, ‘not new’ furniture. We used low-VOC paints and actively avoided ‘Red List’ materials to improve indoor air quality and applied biophilic design principles. Our Sydney office will be relocating in August and as we continue to grow, we will keep doing so in a sustainable way.

We will also continue to work towards our corporate commitments:

• Development and implementation of ADP’s Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP).
• Ongoing development of our Climate Active program to reach our World Green Building Net Zero operating emissions commitment by 2030.
• Continued involvement with Engineers Declare (ADP is a founding member) commitment to climate breakdown and biodiversity collapse.
• Reporting to the United Nations Global Compact on our progress and commitment.

Tips for setting green financial goals in FY2022-23:

• Work with financial institutions who will negotiate better terms to fund strategic decarbonising sustainability initiatives or a new green build.
• If offsetting, look for transparency and integrity around purchased carbon credits that list aligned co-benefits.
• Monitor the crypto space for the emergence of tokenised market assets such as carbon credits for example, BetaCarbon.

– Laurent Deleu, Director and Founding Partner

Learn more about ADP Consulting 

ResponsibleSteel™ is the global steel industry’s first sustainability standard and certification program. In early 2022, BlueScope’s Port Kembla Steelworks (PKSW) in the Illawarra, New South Wales, became the first site in the Asia Pacific region and only the fourth steelmaker in the world to receive the certification.

PKSW was awarded certification following a two-phase, rigorous independent audit assessing BlueScope’s performance against the 12 principles of the standard. This standard covers a range of environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria, including:

• Occupational health and safety
• Environmental aspects – air emissions, noise, water stewardship, waste
  and biodiversity
• Human rights and labour rights
• Climate change and greenhouse gas emissions
• Stakeholder engagement, local communities, and communications

“BlueScope is proud to be a founding member of ResponsibleSteel™, and even more proud today, to achieve site certification of Port Kembla Steelworks. This award reflects the quality of our operations and how positively we seek to  engage with our stakeholders, in particular our customers, suppliers,  employees and our communities.”

– Mark Vassella, BlueScope Managing Director & CEO

Learn more about Bluescope

Image: Central Place Sydney

Green finance is part of Frasers Property Australia’s wider sustainability strategy, and Frasers Property was the first property group in Australia to secure a sustainability-linked loan. Our ability to access green funding sources is an acknowledgment by the global financial community of our industry-leading projects and initiatives. As at June 2022, the proportion of total green corporate facilities for Frasers Property’s Australian platform is an industry-leading 86 per cent. Anita Hoskins, Chief Financial Officer, Frasers Property Australia says it “reinforces the wider market’s recognition of the environmental and social sustainability credentials of the projects in our pipeline, and our global leadership in the sustainability space.”

In setting green finance goals, Hoskins says the first step is for organisations to be clear on their sustainability goals.

“Green finance is embedded as a component of our wider sustainability strategy, which includes the Sustainable Finance Framework we established in 2018. It means we have the infrastructure in place to ensure the credibility of the sustainability representations we make, and it means taking a long-term view of the places and projects we create, because green finance involves taking a long-term view.”

Then it’s a matter of ensuring the credibility of the sustainability representations made. What independent assessors, frameworks or ratings systems will be adopted? Is that infrastructure in place? It will need to be. GRESB is one of the benchmarks we refer to.

From there, it’s important for organisations to be clear on their financing needs, and to identify the nature of the instrument that suits best.

Learn more about Frasers Property Australia 

Image: Burwood Brickworks, Photography by Diana Snape

This coming financial year we’re hoping to extend our regenerative design efforts across more of the sectors we work in.

NH Director Astrid Jenkin recently participated in a panel discussion at DesignBUILD about biophilic design and the increasing awareness of its value to the built environment. Ahead of the panel, we asked design leaders from NH working on projects across healthcare, affordable and social housing, and our commercial sectors to share concepts and methods to achieve biophilic design outcomes. We found that there’s an increasing awareness and appreciation for these principles from all our client and stakeholder groups.

We’re proud of what we’ve achieved already in this area, particularly at our Petal Certified Burwood Brickworks project, which is the only retail centre in the world to achieve the Living Future Institute’s Living Building Challenge certification. We hope to build on what we learned at Burwood Brickworks and extend these regenerative design principles to future projects.

Learn more about NH Architecture