Celebrating our colleagues: Libby Hogarth

Libby Hogarth, Manager, Sustainability Strategy 

My role is to keep the University accountable to its sustainability targets and our sustainability strategy, Here for Good. It’s a role that has me speaking daily with some incredibly talented and passionate researchers, professional staff, and students about making sustainable change for our community. It’s a role that I’ve grown in to over time, supported by great networks across the higher education sector.   

I started my professional journey here at the University, studying Landscape Architecture. After graduating, I started in private practice, but my passion was to make more immediate sustainable change. The significant rise of greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere and the subsequent impacts of climate change are so urgent. When there was an opportunity to work at the University in environmental management, I applied and quite quickly found myself thriving in a world of carbon accounting and sustainability projects.  

One of my first projects here was called “Kick ya bin”. This was in 2012, when we started providing centralised recycling stations in work areas, and removing under-desk bins. It was a big change and we received a “variety” of responses, with many frustrated by the change. But we took our landfill diversion rate from 18 per cent in 2012, to 50 per cent in 2020, so it had a huge influence on our recycling rates and the carbon emissions associated with our waste to landfill. These kinds of cultural shifts, which were a big deal at the time, are now completely normalised in our workplaces.  

I’ve been here for 15 years now, and the climate conversation has evolved significantly, moving from a focus on energy efficiency and recycling, to more embedded sustainability in our institution. Sustainability is becoming business-as-usual in many of our activities and there’s much more transparency and accountability in relation to carbon accounting and sustainability reporting. Staff and students have high expectations of the University as thought leaders in this space, and I feel very lucky to be a part of it.

Sustainability is all about a balancing act. It’s not that you need to change completely. It’s just about doing things a little differently every day. When we all make small and positive changes together, our collective action sets us in the right direction.

Sustainability is an ever-changing topic so I am constantly trying to stay up-to-date with reading, and maintaining close connections with my colleagues across the higher-ed sector. I am Chair of the Go8 Sustainability Forum and we get together online frequently and also face-to-face for a two-day workshop each year to share some of the wins that we’ve had, and also some of the challenges. We support each other because we’re all working towards the same goals and trying to help each other do better.  

South Australia is kicking goals on the energy front at the moment. The State Government has just revised its renewable energy target, aiming for our State to use 100 per cent renewable energy by 2027. So our State is really leading the charge in this space, and it’s largely because we have one of the highest per capita levels of rooftop solar installed anywhere in the world and great uptake of residential batteries.  

As individuals, there are many ways to live a more sustainable lifestyle. I like to ride my bike, eat vegetarian meals when I can, op-shop and be strategic in my overseas travel. I have also electrified my house and invested in rooftop solar and a battery to minimise the need for grid electricity.  

The Kaurna Learning Circle, Karra wirraparinangku, is my favourite place on campus. I was involved in the planning and design of the project, working closely with Uncle Rod O’Brien, our cultural advisor in Wirltu Yarlu, and First Nations artist Paul Herzich. As part of the project, we took down fences, removed some car parking and opened the campus up. It was really an invitation to the rest of Adelaide to say, “The University campus is for everyone. Come on in, you’re welcome.”  

The Learning Circle has flourished as an important cultural space. The design incorporates local plant species and materials, there’s Kaurna language that you can read, and there’s public art. It’s a fantastic combination of what I think is a truly South Australian civic landscape.

These days, my husband and I have found a passion for bike touring, and we’ve cycled thousands of kilometres across fifteen countries. It’s such a fantastic way to travel, and I’d really recommend it. With cycle touring, you travel at the human scale and experience everything at the perfect pace and meet many people who are often interested in our bikes or where we are going. We fly to our destination with our bikes and a bike trailer, reassemble everything at the airport, and ride off from there. We just make up our route every day. It’s really good fun, keeps you fit, and you get guilt-free beer at the end of the day.  

Looking forward, there are great opportunities for the new Adelaide University. We’ve done a lot of work developing our sustainability strategy, Here for Good, with some ambitious targets. I can see that we would build and amplify that strategy with our colleagues from UniSA. It’s exciting to start a new university with that kind of climate action already underpinning it.