Green Skills environment award

Community organisation Green Skills has won the overall award at the WA Environment Awards.

Green Skills works in partnership with business and government and provides a workforce by training unskilled and unemployed workers for green jobs.

Co-founder and project manager Dr Louise Duxbury said the win is a reward for Green Skill’s 20 years of operations in the South West.

“When we started, ‘green’ really wasn’t a commonplace word, there was no real sector for natural resource management. Now it’s burgeoning,” Dr Duxbury said.

“So we were cutting edge, and that was our job; to be at the forefront, to demonstrate what was possible and to train people to undertake that work, and then to employ people.”

Green Skills also took out the award for regional community achievement.

Other winners announced include Woolworths for its zero food waste by 2015, the Australian Native Nursery in Oakford, the Department of Health, and natural resource managers South Coast NRM.