Low Carbon Living Blue Mountains offers participating businesses the opportunity to get rated as either Gold, Silver or Bronze based on the low-carbon achievements they have made.

Each business receives a personalised report outlining:

• Your overall carbon footprint
• Your low-carbon rating (Gold, Silver or Bronze)
• Details of the categories you scored well under
• Advice on which areas you could make changes in to improve your score

The only detail that gets published on the website is your overall rating, with the other details provided to you to assist you on your journey to becoming a low-carbon business.

Find out more about the ratings system, including the factors that are taken into account. 

If you are interested in joining the program, please contact us. 

To obtain a rating and be listed on the website, you will need to provide a combination of self-reported information (simple details that every business will have) and audit data that needs to collected by a qualified environmental auditor.

The self-reported data consists of:

• Energy consumption data covering the last 12 months (verified by billing data or receipts for electricity, natural gas, LPG, vehicle fuel etc.)
• Water consumption data covering the last 12 months (verified by billing data or receipts from Sydney Water or other water suppliers)
• Customer numbers covering the last 12 months (this allows us to calculate your carbon footprint on a per customer basis for comparison with other similar businesses)
• Answers to a short set of questions about your energy, water and waste management practices

The auditor-collected data consists of:

• Details of the types of lighting used in the business
• Details of your business’ water fixtures (taps and showerheads)
• A waste audit that breaks your general waste down into different waste categories

We can suggest auditors operating in the Blue Mountains who can assist you with the collection of the audit data.

The data will need to be provided to us in a specific format so that we can use it to calculate a carbon footprint and a low-carbon rating. To obtain the spreadsheet that needs to be completed by new participants, please contact us.