Theme 3: The environment

Major achievement  

Strategic objective

The environment is considered in all decision making.  

Major initiative 3.5

Protect Gardiners Creek now and into the future through the development and adoption of a master plan for Gardiners Creek, considering recreational, active transport, biodiversity, and environmental initiatives.

Our councillors unanimously endorsed the Gardiners Creek (Kooyongkoot) Master Plan in October 2022.

In April 2023, we celebrated the official launch of the Gardiners Creek (Kooyongkoot) Regional Collaboration. We are working together with 15 other organisations, including Melbourne Water and Bicycle Network, to improve the cultural, amenity, and environmental value of the Gardiners Creek catchment.

Highlights you can expect to see in coming years include:

• improved connections to Toorak Road by building a shared pedestrian link/bridge at Back Creek Reserve
• upgrading the 4 bridges between Nettleton Park and Dorothy Laver Reserve West to meet Australian standards
• advocating for improvements to the Toorak Road underpass in Hawthorn, so it becomes less prone to flooding and silt build-up.

Theme 3 performance

This is a breakdown of the strategic indicators, progress of initiatives and other service performance indicators for this theme. You can find out more detail about these indicators and previous year’s results in the full report.

You can also read through our continuous improvement initiatives, community engagement, and benchmarking activities for this theme in the full report.

Strategic indicators

Many of our strategic indicators saw consistent or improved results in FY2022-23. The strategic indicators that met or exceeded the forecast include the following.

Some indicators did not meet our forecast this year:

Progress of initiatives in the Budget

Initiatives that were completed in FY2022-23:

• Progress towards the targets to reduce Council and community emissions established in the Climate Action Plan by implementing the actions detailed in the Implementation Plan for 2022-23.
• Enable monitoring of community progress towards the community emissions targets in the Climate Action Plan through the implementation of a community emissions measurement model.
• Improve the green canopy coverage in our urban spaces for the enjoyment of future generations by implementing a targeted program to increase the planting of trees on local streets by 1,000 per year.
• Improve the community’s ability to access biodiversity and indigenous vegetation now and into the future by ensuring information on the location and size of biodiversity areas are accurately recorded.
• Protect the Gardiners Creek now and into the future through the development and adoption of a master plan for the Gardiners Creek considering recreational, active transport, biodiversity and environmental initiatives.
• Create an Urban Greening Strategy to protect and enhance our landscapes, trees and green cover in response to the challenges of climate, urban heating and urban densification.
• Reduce the volume of materials going to landfill by using a minimum of 20% of recycled materials including glass, plastics and toners in our asphalt products to resurface roads.
• Provide the community with more options to divert polystyrene from landfill by identifying new partnerships for the disposal of expanded polystyrene.
• Commence gradual bin lid replacement to meet Victorian Government requirement to comply with standard bin colours by 2030.

Other service performance indicators

The following other service performance indicators and measures are based on the FY2022-23, unless stated otherwise.  For more detail, including supporting commentary and how these results were calculated, see the full annual report PDF.

Waste collection