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Karinne
Taylor
Karinne has worked in climate change mitigation and sustainability for most of her professional career. She has worked in circular economy, resource recovery, and energy efficiency programs with the NSW government, primarily focussed on shifting business practices. She has also worked for the NSW Government’s Sustainability Advantage Program, helping manufacturers across NSW improve their sustainability and reduce their resource use. Previously, Karinne has managed NSW’s contribution to projects to improve resource recovery in NSW under the National Packaging Covenant.
Karinne has a Masters in Public Policy, focused on environmental policy and policy implementation. She has also studied lifecycle analysis at a Masters level.
PROJECT
Karinne is the manager of the Waste Rating at the National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS). NABERS is one of the world’s most successful sustainability rating schemes, driving rapid energy efficiency improvements in Australia’s built environment. In this role she is responsible for the technical development of the Waste Rating, and stakeholder engagement work to use NABERS’ success to create a step change for resource recovery.
MOTIVATION FOR AND COMMITMENT TO CREATING A BETTER AND MORE SUSTAINABLE PLANET
I remember sitting in my Year 2 classroom making a poster on recycling and realising that this was what I wanted to do with my life – ensuring that how we lived our lives didn’t make our planet less blue-green, in the vision of an eight year old. This has continued throughout my life, the understanding that as humans we will impact on our environment no matter what we do. All organisms do, but as a species we have a greater, more lasting impact than any other and it is our collective responsibility to address this.
I seek to find ways to ensure we make choices that have less impact than other choices that could be made. However, many of those choices are fixed by the systems and structures of our society. My motivation has always been driven by contributing to effective systemic change so we can continue to live good lives within the boundaries of the planet’s capacity. I believe there shouldn’t be a trade- off between a life well-lived and a life lived within the boundaries of this planet, and this is achievable with determination, collaboration, compassion and clever thinking.
