Environmental Sustainability Policy

Mary MacKillop Today is committed to understanding the environmental impact, if any, of our programming and organisational activities and conducting our activities in an environmentally sustainable way. By doing so, we strive to promote positive impacts on the environment and avoid, minimise, or mitigate risks and negative
impacts on the environment through our programming and business practices.

The CEO shall appoint a staff person to be the environmental sustainability focal point for the organisation who promotes this important aspect of our work through activities such as staff training, policy revision, tool development, and researching best practice.

We recognise that integrating environmental sustainability into our development projects improves their long-term benefits and impact.

We consider the ‘do no harm’ principle in all our development work and identify strategies to avoid, minimise, or mitigate any negative impacts of our projects on the environment.

We recognise the potential impacts of organisational and office activities and seek to minimise the demands/impacts from such activities.

We recognise the impact that climate change is having on our partner communities, and seek to mitigate this impact wherever possible.

Mary MacKillop Today’s main focus is education. Therefore, we do not support projects or partnerships that specifically target environmental sustainability because it is not our expertise.

Mary MacKillop Today mainstreams environmental sustainability into its programming. It does this through:

• Working with local people to identify any environmental impacts whilst conducting the needs assessment and planning of projects. This ensures early identification of environmental risks.
• Analysing the information gained from the needs assessment to ensure that the project design avoids, minimises, or mitigates any negative environmental impact.
• Monitoring and evaluating all projects to measure their environmental impact and using lessons in ongoing design and management.
• Training and capacity building of partners and other stakeholders in environmental management and development of environmental sustainability policies.
• Sharing our environmental policy with our partners and referencing it in our Partnership Agreement.
• Raising Environment sustainability awareness among participants and stakeholders involved in our projects.
• Complying with our partner government laws, standards, or policies.
• Incorporating climate change mitigation into our projects wherever possible.
• Working towards an integrated approach of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) across all projects.

Mary MacKillop Today commits to integrate environmental sustainability into its daily activities through:

• Minimising operational consumption (e.g. minimising printing, switching off lights and equipment when not in use, minimising waste).
• Minimising flights through using communication technologies and local capacity.
• Increasing environmental impact awareness through emails or other communications.
• Recycling all recyclable goods.
• Choosing ‘green’ businesses and/or considering environmental impacts when procuring goods and services.

Environmental sustainability: Mary MacKillop Today defines environmental sustainability as a way in which demands placed on the environment can be met on a long-term basis.