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More solar power for Victoria
We led the charge to get the state parliament ot improve a solar feed-in tariff law that will pay home owners, community groups and small businesses for the solar power they export to the grid. As a spin-off from our campaign, the Victorian Government committed $100 million for a new large-scale solar power plant.
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Landmark water deal for our northern rivers
We worked with farmers and government agencies to convince the Victorian Government to change water trading rules in northern Victorian irrigation areas to allow environmental water purchases. The federal government will now buy 460 billion litres for northern rivers like the Campaspe, Goulburn and Lodden, and of course the mighty Murray, over the next five years.
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Victoria - the green jobs state
We identified 26,000 new green jobs for Victoria in the areas of home retrofits, recycling and the manufacturing and installation of trains and trams, solar hot water and wind turbines as part of our Green Jobs report. We also organised a Green Jobs Summit with the Brotherhood of St Laurence attended by 180 of the State’s key decision-makers and leaders to identify key actions for a green jobs plan for Victoria.
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A scheme to recycle TV's and computers
Environment Ministers across Australia agreed to develop a scheme to recycle TV’s, computers and electronic waste (we helped them along a little through our Reborn campaign). With around 3 million new TV’s hitting the stores each year and the looming switch to digital, this couldn’t come at a better time.
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Reaching more people
We helped 30,150 people take action for our environment and a further 220,000 people used tools on our website to live more sustainably. Not bad for a small organisation.
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Raising the environment's profile
Our media work was again successful in highlighting the plight and solutions for Victoria’s environment. We drove close to 500 environmental stories in major state and national media, including print, television and radio.
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A pathway to halve our emissions
We completed the research phase for our people’s action plan to slash greenhouse emissions. Our research demonstrates how Victorian can halve its greenhouse emissions by 2020 using existing technology! Energy efficiency, renewable and gas and transport are the key areas for action. The people’s action plan will be released soon.
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Supporting community action for a safe climate
Over 15,000 Victorians joined Environment Victoria in the 2008 Walk against Warming. The Melbourne Walk remains the world’s largest annual community climate rally. We continue to engage with over 40 community climate action groups to help them grow into powerful organisations and communities in their own right.
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Putting a spotlight on biodiversity
We are a member of the Victoria Naturally Alliance, an alliance of nine environment groups working together to raise awareness of Victoria’s biodiversity crisis. In 2008/09 we posed a united front through a submission to the Victorian Government’s Land and Biodiversity White Paper. Environment Victoria also supported the VNPA, Friends of the Earth and other environment groups to get northern Victorian wetlands protected through the newly declared Redgum National Parks. The water deal we negotiated (pt 2.) will provide water to those redgum wetlands.
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Keeping our business and political leaders honest
We keep an eye on the government and polluting businesses. We monitor the Victorian Government’s progress on delivering their election promises through the Envirowatch Report. We continue to provide clear guidance to the government on how their investment decisions can benefit rather than harm the environment. We have provided carbon liability advice to potential investors in the proposed HRL coal plant in the Latrobe Valley. And we have measured and made public the greenhouse implications of the government’s proposed desalination plant. We continue to advocate strongly for a better Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and improvements to the national renewable energy target.
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A new vision for Melbourne's transport network
We developed a vision to boost public transport in Melbourne and lobbied hard for big investment in public transport. The Victorian government has since committed to invest billions in public transport.
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An alternative plan for Melbourne's water supply
We think the north-south pipeline and the desalination plant will damage our environment, so we developed a water supply plan for Melbourne that doesn’t include either of these supplies. Our plan meets supply needs and protects our rivers by boosting water efficiency and using stormwater and recycled water. We are lobbying for the Victorian Government to adopt our plan.
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Creating leaders to help others go green
We know we can’t reach everyone in Victoria on our own so we trained community leaders and champions to spread the word. Last year we trained 64 people from different cultures to help their local community members take green action. We trained over 140 aged care workers to help elderly people save water, energy and waste. And we provided negotiation training to our network of river champions (and its working, one community group last year negotiated increased flows for the Moorabool River!). We also gave our river champions access to the best minds in river health through our new phone advice line called WaterLinks (co-developed with Waterkeepers Australia).
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Language is no barrier to being green
In 2008/09 we worked with 19 different multicultural communities helping them green up their lives. Last year, our Multicultural Leaders in Sustainability program worked with young people from many cultures to help them deliver environmental programs within their own communities.
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Inspiring action through storytelling
The people who are part of our programs are the inspiration types and we think their stories would inspire others. So we made short-films and stories about dozens of the people we work with. Some tell their story of why they love their local river, others tell their story of why they help their community to go green.
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Dump awards get the lemons off the shelf (literally)
Our 2008 DUMP Awards once again highlighted the damaging and useless packaging that adds to the rapid depletion of the earth’s resources. The awards grabbed the attention of Golden DUMP winner Coles who removed the winning packaged lemons from their shelves after being told of their award! Last year we included a new ‘best of class’ category called the KEEP (Kerbing the Environmental Effects of Packaging) Awards to show that packaging doesn’t have to cost the earth.
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Trial reduced plastic bags by 80 percent
Environment Victoria was part of a trial to place a levy on plastic bags to encourage people to use reusable bags instead. The trial, run by the Victorian Government and retailers, was a success with 80 percent reduction in plastic bag use. We are now working on the environment Ministers to get a national scheme in place.
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Helping those that need it most
Many Victorians don’t get access to information on how to live more sustainably, so we help them out. Last year we worked with 1,500 low income and at-risk people and families from Geelong, the Surfcoast, Colac, Bannockburn, Moreland, Flemington, Dandenong and Noble Park. We gave them the information and encouragement they need to do their bit for our environment by saving water, energy and waste.
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Getting whole communities involved
We understand big changes can happen when whole communities to go green. Our GreenTown program works with families, community centres and businesses in the Arabic, Chaldean, Turkish/Kurdish and east African communities in Melbourne. We train community members to undertake audits of homes and small businesses and then those people get to it and start helping their neighbours go green.
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