A forum held on Thursday by the town’s leaders was the beginning of a community awareness campaign to investigate and support the concept.

Lockhart Progress Association president Max Day said the initiative was aimed towards helping Lockhart build a positive future.

“Today’s forum intends to increase awareness and show how an environmentally sound eco-industrial park can create jobs, and advance the up-taking of technology,” Mr Day said.

Gerry Gillespie Chairman of Zero Waste Australia drew attention to the strong relationship between resources, waste generation and green house emissions. Greenhouse gains can be delivered by avoiding, reducing, reusing and recycling waste. His message was the importance of returning organic materials back to agricultural soils.

Strategic Futurist and Value Systems Specialist Marcus Barber showed how symbiotic business parks helped lower the costs of sourcing materials, improved the supply chain management and delivered on-going profitability.

There were plenty of examples given of industrial symbiosis where industry co-locates to use another’s waste such as water from cooling tanks, sludge, steel off- cuts, paper, glass, and sand.

Dr David Batten illustrated this in his research on eco-efficient design systems in the fields of waste, water, energy, transport and community planning.`

A member of the CSIRO research team on biofuel, Dr Andrew Braid talked about opportunities in rural areas for first generation production of biofuels.

Economic development manager with the Buloke Shire in Victoria, Graeme Harris talked about how an active community group and a forward thinking local council initiated the Donald industrial estate.

The Lockhart Progress Association had been successful in gaining funds from the Natural Resources Advisory Council’s Forging Partnerships Program. Fran Day had worked with Kerri Francis to prepare the forum’s program.