On the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day we are reminded about our precious Earth and our responsibility to her.

At Googong we take our responsibility to the environment seriously. The Green Building Association of Australia certified Googong’s sustainability credentials with the first 5-Star Green Star – Communities rating in the ACT/NSW region, and we have recently received re-certification at 5-Star. The Green Star – Communities rating is recognised nationally and creates an Australia-wide standard of excellence for sustainable development. Googong is lauded for its excellence across a number of areas covering sustainable planning, design and construction. In 2019 Googong won the prestigious UDIA NSW Award for Best Masterplanned Communities recognising the teams long-term vision of building a sustainable community.

• We have built an integrated water cycle system that delivers non-potable recycled water to all homes, parks and open spaces in the town and reduces potable water consumption by over 60%; the system ensures Googong’s eventual 18,000 residents will use less water than the average Australian community of 6,500 people. 

• We are building sports facilities and roads from recycled materials. A kilometre of road (two lanes) paved with Reconophalt can contain 500,000 plastic bags and packaging equivalents, 165,000 glass bottle equivalents and toner from 12,000 used printer cartridges.

• The towns design guidelines that exceed required BASIX sustainability standards, maximised lot orientation for solar passive design, and introduced measures to mitigate the impacts of Heat Island Effect in the neighbourhood.

• 24% of Googong is dedicated to open space.

• A full-time community manager fosters community connections and environmental education programs.

• Alongside government and environmentalists, we have heavily invested in the protection of local flora and fauna with a $1 million program to save the vulnerable pink-tailed worm lizard which also calls Googong home.

• We’ve incorporated state-of-the-art Smart Cities technologies such as digital-enabled waste and facilities management systems, infrastructure for electric cars, public Wi-Fi, lighting and environmental monitoring systems to reduce the town’s carbon footprint and overhead costs, and more.

This year’s Earth Day theme, Restore Our Earth, challenges us to act now to address the climate crisis. The Googong team have been committed to driving this agenda in our town planning for more than a decade, and we will continue to challenge ourselves into the future.

The urgency could not be greater, and the stakes could not be higher.