Australian Prawn Farmers

Enviro Action helped the Australian Prawn Farmers Association to implement an eco-efficiency agreement, which involves annual benchmarking surveys on each farm, public environmental reporting, case studies and a group of five farms implementing a voluntary ISO 14001. The farms are using a group training approach with a series of three workshops held  by Jean Cannon at the Gold Coast hinterland, Cardwell and Townsville and followed up by an on farm visit for each involved prior to external audit.

Eco-efficiency is about doing more with less. It is aimed at linking environmental and financial performance and involves using resources (such as energy, water, feed and other resources) more efficiently so that there is more production and less waste output.

The aim is to achieve improved environmental outcomes while lowering costs and increasing competitiveness. Eco-efficiency allows a business to demonstrate its care of the environment while also looking after its important business 'bottom line.'

Most farms already are doing a lot of this. It's called good management. Eco-efficiency is not prescriptive, not the same on every farm. The study documents what is being done and looks for more ways to be efficient and save both resources and money. It is about identifying the impacts prawn farming has on the environment and identifying a range of ways businesses can save money by also looking after the environment.

Matt West at Australian Prawn Farms Pty Ltd, based at Ilbilbie near Mackay in north Queensland was the first of the group to achieve ISO 14001 certiciation.