ESG Journey for a Victorian Private School

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) is the consideration of holistic sustainability beyond the typical environmental factors such as energy, water, and waste. Through ESG, focus is given on other aspects including equity, diversity, ethics and codes of conduct, reporting transparency, both within and outside the organisation.

erbas™ SUSTAIN was engaged by a prestigious APS private school in Victoria to explore the school’s ESG performance and to identify future development. Through a series of stakeholder engagement workshops, site audits of existing metering and BMS (Building Management System) conditions and one on one interviews with key stakeholders, they developed and proposed a framework for the school to measure and monitor their ESG performance.

The two ESG workshops involved a wide range of stakeholders including the principal, executive staff, facility managers, teaching staff, and students. erbas™ SUSTAIN workshopped questions relating to the ESG drivers for the school, what was important to them environmentally (eg. energy, water, waste, renewables, indoor environment quality, etc), socially (eg. diversity, equality, education, community engagement, procurement, etc) and from a governance perspective (eg. policies, risk management, transparency, reporting compliance, etc).

The groups were engaged and interested in the content, which produced enthusiastic participation in the workshops. By the end of the second workshop, erbas™ SUSTAIN proposed a working framework for the school that involved systematically organising and categorising their current ESG accomplishments, how to identify and prioritise areas of improvement and a methodology to benchmark key areas.

erbas™ SUSTAIN looks forward to working with the school in the next step of the journey.