At GECA, we’re passionate about empowering professionals and individuals to make informed choices for people and the planet. If you want to recharge this summer while expanding your understanding of sustainability – we’ve got you covered! From actionable strategies to groundbreaking innovations, we’ve curated 11 essential reads to inspire your journey toward a better future.
Whether you’re curious about the latest advancements in the circular economy, environmental innovations, or human rights, these publications will enrich your understanding and spark meaningful action.
Sustainability and Business Strategy
In the past, businesses have framed sustainability as a unique selling proposition, but we’re increasingly moving to a place where sustainability is essential to the success of every industry. Sustainability is now a baseline expectation for businesses to remain competitive and resilient.
1. Future Focus 2024 Authenticity Advantage™ Report
This report from Future Focus examines the evolving state of authentic sustainability in Australian businesses. Using their unique Authenticity Index™, it identifies key factors driving success, including integrating sustainability into business culture, communication, and commitments.
The 2024 findings reveal a growing emphasis on environmental initiatives and the power of transparent communication in aligning employee and stakeholder expectations. Businesses scoring highly on the Index consistently outperform their peers in customer growth, talent retention, and profitability.
This report offers inspiration and actionable insights for anyone seeking to embed sustainability authentically into their operations and enhance long-term resilience. [Read more]
2. Marketing Playbook for a Circular Economy
This insightful playbook by The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, in collaboration with Kantar, redefines marketing’s role in driving the transition to a circular economy. It emphasises the power of marketers to inspire circular behaviours, scale circular solutions, and influence businesses to embed sustainability at every level.
The playbook highlights four key action pathways:
• Creating scalable circular solutions
• Driving demand for circular propositions
• Making circular behaviours irresistible
• Integrating circular KPIs
By aligning storytelling, innovation, and collaboration, it demonstrates how marketing can lead the shift from linear “take-make-waste” models to value-driven circular practices. [Read more]
Driving Circular Innovation
Embracing the transition to a circular economy in Australia is a significant step toward achieving a better future for people and our planet. Businesses and organisations not adopting a circular approach will be left behind.
3. Australia’s Circular Economy Framework 2024
The Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) has unveiled this comprehensive roadmap for doubling the circularity of our economy by 2035.
The framework outlines actionable targets to reduce material footprints, boost resource productivity, and enhance recovery rates across industry, the built environment, and food systems.
It aligns with GECA’s mission of enabling better choices by focusing on designing out waste, keeping materials in use, and regenerating nature. [Read more]
4. The Circular Advantage: Unlocking Australia’s Circular Economy Potential
This landmark report by the Circular Economy Ministerial Advisory Group outlines a comprehensive blueprint for how businesses, governments, and communities can collaborate to design out waste, enhance resource efficiency, and regenerate natural systems.
The report’s emphasis on product stewardship, sustainable procurement, and certification standards aligns with GECA’s rigorous certification and lifecycle analysis principles. By advocating for a Circular Economy Act and a National Circular Economy Policy Framework, it mirrors GECA’s role in helping businesses future-proof supply chains, meet world-class standards, and drive genuine sustainability outcomes. [Read more]
5. Investing in Intelligent Regulation: The Economic Benefits of Product Stewardship
This white paper by the Product Stewardship Centre of Excellence outlines how well-designed regulation can drive Australia’s transition to a circular economy. By emphasising the need for regulated product stewardship, the report demonstrates how intelligent regulation stimulates private-sector investment, fosters innovation, and ensures efficient resource use while reducing environmental impacts.
Key takeaways include the economic advantages of regulated over voluntary stewardship models, such as incentivising investment in circular solutions at scale, ensuring alignment with long-term environmental and economic goals, addressing inefficiencies in voluntary schemes, and levelling the playing field for all producers.
The white paper strongly aligns with GECA’s lifecycle approach to sustainability, advocating for accountability across a product’s entire lifecycle—from design and production to post-consumption recovery. [Read more]
6. Value Chain Collaboration: Unlocking Circular Markets in Australia
This report, developed by Circular Australia and Arup, outlines how value chain collaboration can overcome barriers and unlock the full potential of circular markets in Australia. It highlights five critical industries—lithium-ion batteries, green steel, PET plastics, low-carbon concrete, and textiles—mapping pathways to reduce waste, improve resource efficiency, and enhance economic value.
Key recommendations include expanding product stewardship to increase accountability for system-wide externalities, encouraging collaboration across industries and governments to harmonise standards and scale solutions, and developing circular business models, such as material passports and design-for-disassembly strategies.
For GECA, the report’s principles of lifecycle accountability and transparent standards resonate with our lifecycle ecolabel certification framework. [Read more]
Human Rights and Social Responsibility
At GECA, we know there’s no such thing as sustainability without considering the treatment of people across your supply chain. GECA’s ecolabel standards include criteria that require companies certified under our scheme to provide evidence that they are meeting human and labour rights in their supply chains and within their business. These essential reads tackle pressing human rights issues, from eliminating racism to ensuring fair labour practices.
7. National Anti-Racism Framework: A Roadmap to Eliminating Racism in Australia
The Australian Human Rights Commission’s National Anti-Racism Framework Report (2024) sets out an ambitious, whole-of-society approach to eliminating systemic racism. It offers 63 actionable recommendations across education, health, workplaces, justice, and media to dismantle entrenched inequities and ensure cultural safety.
Key recommendations include establishing a National Anti-Racism Taskforce to oversee implementation, embedding cultural safety standards in workplaces, education, and healthcare settings, introducing a positive duty under the Racial Discrimination Act to eliminate racism proactively, and strengthening Indigenous Data Sovereignty to monitor racism effectively. [Read more]
8. Modern Slavery Disclosure Quality Ratings: ASX100 Companies Update 2024
This fourth annual report from Monash University benchmarks the quality of modern slavery disclosures among ASX100 companies. It reveals substantial progress in transparency and accountability since the introduction of Australia’s Modern Slavery Act (2018) while highlighting areas for further improvement.
The report highlights increased transparency, with 56 companies achieving A-grades for their disclosures, a significant improvement from only three in 2020. However, areas for growth remain, particularly in reporting on supply chains beyond Tier 1 and standardising due diligence and grievance processes. Among the top-performing companies, best practices included effective governance frameworks, detailed risk assessments, and robust remediation processes, setting benchmarks for others. [Read more]
Nature-Inspired Innovations
Explore groundbreaking research and actionable strategies to align with planetary boundaries and create sustainable solutions inspired by nature.
9. Keeping Global Consumption Within Planetary Boundaries
Published in Nature, this report identifies the disproportionate environmental impact of the wealthiest global consumers and outlines actionable pathways to align consumption with planetary boundaries. By analysing six key environmental indicators—including carbon emissions, nitrogen flows, and biodiversity loss—the study highlights how overconsumption drives ecological degradation, with the top 10% of consumers contributing disproportionately to planetary boundary transgressions.
The report emphasises that targeted reductions in consumption and efficiency improvements among high-expenditure groups could significantly mitigate environmental pressures, particularly in the food and services sectors. For GECA, this aligns closely with our advocacy for lifecycle accountability and sustainable design under the umbrella of SDG 12. [Read more]
10. Decent Work in Nature-Based Solutions: Unlocking Jobs Through Investment
This collaborative report from the ILO, UNEP, and IUCN explores the potential of nature-based solutions (NbS) to create millions of decent jobs while addressing global environmental and social challenges. It emphasises the critical role of NbS in supporting biodiversity, mitigating climate change, and enhancing community resilience, all while fostering inclusive economic opportunities.
The report highlights that by 2030, NbS could generate 20–32 million additional jobs, particularly in fields like agriculture, forestry, and ecological restoration. Developing key technical skills—such as ecological restoration and geospatial analysis—and core competencies like stakeholder collaboration is essential to unlocking this potential.
Equally critical is a strong focus on social equity, ensuring the meaningful inclusion of women, youth, and Indigenous communities in NbS projects and fostering diverse and equitable participation. [Read more]
11. Core Criteria for Mature Landscape Initiatives
This collective position paper by ISEAL defines the essential building blocks for landscape initiatives that aim to drive systemic sustainability transformations at scale. Focused on multi-stakeholder collaboration, it sets out four core criteria—scale, governance, collective goals, and monitoring—that ensure resilient, credible, and impactful initiatives.
The report underscores the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration, advocating for the active involvement of local communities, governments, NGOs, and market actors to align actions and policies for long-term sustainability.
It highlights the need for collective monitoring through transparent reporting and performance metrics to effectively track ecological, social, and economic progress across landscapes. Additionally, it calls for integrated governance structures that empower stakeholders to address landscape-level sustainability challenges together, fostering a unified and impactful approach to sustainable development. [Read more]
At GECA, we believe in the power of knowledge to create a sustainable future. These publications reflect the interconnectedness of environmental, social, and economic systems—a perspective we champion through our ecolabelling program and advocacy work.
Which of these publications inspires you the most? Join the conversation on our social channels and share your sustainable summer reading list with us!
