The Keep Australia Beautiful Victoria team are so excited to share the worthy and wonderful winners of the 43rd Annual Tidy Towns and Cities Sustainability Awards.
After a fantastic night hosted on the 28th October at Rydges Melbourne, we awarded some of the best and brightest projects and people from across the state, ultimately crowining our 2025 Tidy Town of the year - Mornington Peninsula Shire, and our 2025 Tidy City of the year - City of Frankston. Pictures from the event can be found here - Tidy Towns 2025 Gallery. and information about all our finalists, can be found here - 2025 Tidy Towns and Cities Finalists.
We look forward to bringing you more stories, detail, insights and outcomes from our amazing Tidy Towns Network over the coming year, as we celebrate all the great work happening across the whole state.
Huge thank you to our partners - EPA Victoria, for their ongoing support and to Joss Crawford for speaking at our event - educating and updating everyone on the great work the EPA is doing. Thank you also to our sponsors, Awards Online, Heidelberg Materials, and to Rydges for helping us put on a fantastic night.
Delivered in partnership with the Victorian Government, the redevelopment of the Port Phillip EcoCentre as a unique, purpose-built facility increases the EcoCentre's ability to deliver sustainability programs to our regional community and provides a leading example of environmentally sustainable design.
Circular Peninsula’s Lid Rescue Project was created to empower our local communities to take action, reduce waste, and reimagine what plastic waste can become—one rescued plastic lid at a time. Plastic lid collections help local businesses meet their sustainability targets, reduce their carbon footprint, and contribute to a cleaner planet. Collected lids are collected, shredded, and then turned into new products.
Bin it or Take it Home with you! is a consumer awareness campaign targeting littering behaviour and its impact on our waterways and the community that offers easy to implement solutions to manage litter responsibly.
Frankston City Council set an ambitious target to plant 60,000 trees over three years. The program was adapted to include a final year focused on tree maintenance and supporting the community to plant trees on private land to drive canopy growth under the Urban Forest Action Plan 2020.
The Windharp Horizons program is working towards a 2043 Vision to revitalise our regional landscape (700,000 hectares) by promoting sustainability in environmental and agricultural practices, and reconnecting fragmented ecosystems for the protection of our unique species.
In this community-led project primary students planted dunes and created artworks for educational signage to protect Rosebud’s coast from storm-tide erosion. It builds local pride, prevents habitat loss, and strengthens resilience through education and hands-on care for native vegetation and vulnerable shorelines.
Launched in 2015, Habitat Heroes is a Council funded Gardens for Wildlife-style program with a focus on increasing biodiversity values on private properties through establishment of native and indigenous gardens, biodiversity education, and supporting Wyndham’s environmental resilience through encouragement of community-led advocacy for the protection of local flora and fauna.
An initiative, partially funded by Sustainability Victoria at Queen Victoria Market’s Purpose Precinct, where surplus produce was transformed into delicious retail products, and people from Melbourne and beyond came together in our low-waste kitchen for hands-on workshops, tours, and events that built skills, connections, and a commitment to reducing food-waste.
Our Survival Day is a culturally safe, inclusive event held annually at the Briars in Mt Martha on January 26 that celebrates the survival, resilience and strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples through music, food, art, dance, education and community connection on Bunurong land.
MAD have established a Pottery Festival to celebrate the art of pottery, and serve as a catalyst for community bonding with artists from all over. Creating a vibrant exchange of ideas, alongside the establishment of a Community Pottery Studio to maintain the spirit of the Festival throughout the year.
Share&Swap Shop is a pop-up event where community shares pre-loved items and can swap for re-loved items. Masha and Meenakshi met in March 2023 during the City of Port Phillip Environmental Leadership program and later completed the Circular Impact Academy with Circular Activator and Sustainability Victoria. At a Share&Swap Shop, participants donate up to 6 items—anything of a quality participants would comfortably share with a friend. It’s a cashless market, often featuring free workshops focused on sustainability topics and interactive displays to deepen community engagement.
The toy library focuses on repurposing and maintaining sustainable toys for children in the community thereby reducing waste and promoting responsible consumption of toys while fostering children’s development, imagination and creativity through play-based learning.
Their project - "Cycle of Change: turning periods into progress by taking free reusable menstrual products from a student idea to council action and national conversation." Cycle of Change was born from a simple but urgent observation: too many students miss out on education or experience embarrassment due to period poverty, while thousands of disposable menstrual products end up in landfill every year.
The Southern Peninsula Laundry and Shower Program (SPLaSh) operates on the Rosebud foreshore supporting people who are homeless, particularly rough sleeping, providing access to showers, laundry facilities, food, clothing, tents and other equipment and connection to support services in a friendly, welcoming and non-judgmental environment.
The Mornington Peninsula Shire (MPS) commissioned a 12-month Virtual Energy Network (VEN) pilot to evaluate feasibility of decentralised energy systems for council operations. In partnership with ReThink Sustainability, MPS assessed how virtual energy trading between council sites could be used to reduce operating costs & emissions through improved solar utilisation.
Bayside Community Emergency Relief (BCER) delivers grassroots, volunteer driven targeted food and crisis relief across Bayside, Glen Eira, and Kingston local government areas as well as Melbourne wide when needed, expanding access to support services through innovative partnerships, inclusive outreach, and deep local engagement.
The project sought and was successful in getting the Beechworth Historic Precinct included on the National Heritage List, recognised for its outstanding value to the nation as one of Australia’s best-preserved gold rush-era administrative centres.
