Nominations for the Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence Awards are now open to businesses that embrace sustainability.
The awards aim to raise the profile of stewardship for business, Government and NGOs.
Product stewardship acknowledges that those involved in designing, manufacturing and selling products have a responsibility to ensure those products or materials are managed in a way that reduces their environmental and human health impacts, throughout the life cycle and across the supply chain.
There are four award categories that schemes, businesses and NGOs can enter, with a winner announced in each.
The categories are:
There will also be an overall Product Stewardship Champion of the Year.
The Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence was established in December 2020 by a consortium of UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures, the Australian Industry Group and Cox Inall Communications in partnership with the Australian Government through the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment.
Minister for the Environment Sussan Ley said the centre played a key role in driving Australia’s circular economy towards an 80 per cent recovery rate across all waste streams by 2030.
“Product stewardship needs to be part of the way we do business, influencing the ways we design and manufacture and the ways we collect and recycle components at the end of a product’s life,” Minister Ley said.
Ai Group’s Chief Executive Innes Willox applauded the centre's initiatives.
“Better management of waste as a resource helps build not just a sustainable community, but more competitive industry supply chains," Mr Willox said.
Nominations for entries close on Friday, November 26, and winners will be announced on Friday, December 10.
For more information, please visit www.stewardshipexcellence.com.au or enter the awards here.
Wendy Larter is Communications Manager at the Australian Industry Group. She has more than 20 years’ experience as a reporter, features writer, contributor and sub-editor for newspapers and magazines including The Courier-Mail in Brisbane and Metro, the News of the World, The Times and Elle in the UK.
