A Year of Collective Impact: How Early Childhood Services Are Re-Imagining Sustainability in Practice
Early childhood services everywhere have been rethinking what sustainability means and how it shows up in daily practice. Not as a theme or activity, but as a way of seeing, responding, and planning that values care, connection, and responsibility.
This year, that rethinking has led to meaningful shifts. Services have moved from treating sustainability as an environmental add-on to recognising it as integral to quality early childhood practice. They're moving from delivering sustainability activities to investigating with children. They're moving from isolated efforts to collective learning.
This is what progress looks like in sustainability education: not perfection, but intention. Not finished work, but ongoing commitment.
What We've Learned Together
Services engaging with sustainability this year have demonstrated that change doesn't require complete program overhauls or significant new resources. It requires a willingness to notice differently, respond thoughtfully, and reflect regularly.
Several themes emerged across services:
Everyday moments matter more than special activities
The most powerful sustainability learning happened in routines, transitions, and spontaneous interactions, not in planned lessons. Children noticed, questioned, and cared in moments that couldn't have been scripted.
Services that learned to recognise these moments found they were already supporting sustainability thinking. They didn't need new activities. They needed new ways of seeing what was already unfolding.
Holistic sustainability changes how teams plan
When sustainability expanded beyond recycling and gardening to encompass all its domains—environmental, social, economic, cultural, and leadership and governance—it became relevant to every aspect of practice.
Conflict resolution became an opportunity to explore social sustainability through fairness and care. Dramatic play in the imaginative play cafe connected to economic sustainability as children negotiated resources and created circular systems. Acknowledgement of Country and learning from Traditional Custodians deepened cultural sustainability. Involving children in decisions about their environment supported shared leadership and developed agency.
This broader understanding meant services could embed sustainability across the program without feeling as though it was one more thing to fit in. It was already there, woven through the social dynamics, creative experiences, and decision-making structures that shaped each day.
Children's agency transforms sustainability from compliance to collaboration
Services that positioned children as co-researchers, not recipients of information, reported deeper engagement and more authentic learning. Children's questions guided investigations. Their observations shaped planning. Their care contributions were documented and celebrated.
This shift aligned with EYLF 2.0 expectations around children's agency while making sustainability feel more meaningful to everyone involved.
Place-connected practice grounds abstract concepts in lived experience
Services that deepened their connection to local places, whether urban, suburban, or regional, found that sustainability became more tangible. Children cared for this garden, these birds, this patch of ground. Their learning was immediate, observable, and emotionally connected.
Place pedagogy transformed sustainability from something distant and overwhelming into something within reach.
Imagining What's Possible
Consider what becomes possible when sustainability shifts from isolated activities to embedded practice across a service.
Picture a service where sustainability isn't something educators plan for separately. Instead, it's woven through how materials are organised, how conflicts are resolved, how routines unfold, and how children's questions are received. Teams notice sustainability thinking as it happens rather than waiting for designated moments to address it.
Imagine a service where every team member, not just the sustainability champion, recognises children's care contributions and responds to their sustainability thinking. Planning discussions naturally include consideration of how experiences connect children to place, fairness, and responsibility. Documentation highlights thinking, not just activity outcomes.
Consider what might emerge when families see themselves as partners in sustainability learning rather than recipients of information. They share observations from home. They ask questions about what children are noticing. They contribute knowledge about local places, cultural practices, or family traditions that support care and connection.
Picture children who see themselves as capable of making decisions that matter. They're consulted about how materials are used and stored. Their investigations into local environments are taken seriously and given time to develop. Their ideas about fairness and sharing shape how the community functions.
This isn't a distant ideal. It's what becomes possible when sustainability moves from the margins of practice to the centre. When it stops being an additional requirement and becomes integral to how services operate and how teams respond to children.
The shifts happening across Australian services this year suggest this kind of embedded practice is within reach. Not perfectly realised, but genuinely emerging.
Celebrating Without Stopping
It's important to acknowledge progress without implying the work is finished. Sustainability in early childhood education is not a destination. It's an ongoing commitment to care, reflection, and growth.
Celebrating this year's achievements means recognising:
The services that supported professional learning, even when time was tight
The leadership teams that questioned their assumptions and tried new approaches
The children whose thinking, questions, and care shaped how sustainability came to life in programs
The families who engaged with sustainability conversations and brought ideas from home
All of this deserves recognition. And all of it will continue evolving in the year ahead.
What's Next: Deepening Engagement in 2026
As 2025 closes, the focus shifts to how sustainability can deepen across entire services through what we call engagement architecture: building sustainability together, one layer at a time.
This isn't about implementing everything at once. It's about creating the structures, routines, and shared understandings that allow sustainability to become embedded through careful scaffolding.
The architecture begins with team foundation—ensuring everyone contributes from their existing strengths and interests rather than feeling sustainability is added work. When teams develop shared understanding and language, they create the foundation for everything that follows.
From that foundation, children become genuine co-contributors rather than recipients of adult-designed activities. Services learn to recognize the sustainability thinking children already demonstrate and involve them in real decisions that shape their environment and community.
As team and children's engagement strengthens, families shift from supporters to partners with purpose. They contribute knowledge, perspective, and skills rather than simply complying with service requests. Their genuine influence shapes the direction of sustainability practice.
Finally, community connections emerge organically as the service becomes more permeable. What happens inside begins connecting to what happens beyond, and the service functions as a hub where sustainability thinking and action radiates outward into the broader community.
The goal isn't to add more initiatives. It's to build systems that allow sustainability to become part of everyday practice across each layer, creating the kind of embedded practice that sustains over time and weathers changes in staff, families, and circumstances.
A Collective Journey
Sustainability in early childhood education is not something one educator or one service can achieve alone. It's a collective effort, shaped by shared learning, peer support, and willingness to try, reflect, and adjust.
This year, that collective effort has been visible across Australia. Services in different contexts, with different challenges and resources, have found ways to make sustainability meaningful in their practice. They've shared ideas, asked questions, and supported one another's growth.
That's the kind of community that creates lasting change. Not through competition or comparison, but through collaboration and care.
Thank You
To every service that engaged with sustainability thinking this year—whether through formal learning, quiet reflection, or everyday practice—thank you.
Your work matters. Not just because it meets curriculum requirements or aligns with frameworks, but because it shapes how children see themselves in relation to others, to their environment, and to the future.
The shifts your service has made, the moments your team has noticed, the questions you've asked—all of it contributes to a generation of children who understand care, connection, and responsibility as central to how they live in the world.
That's an impact worth celebrating.
One Final Reflection:
In one word, how would you describe your sustainability journey this year?
We'd love to hear from you. Share your word in the comments or in our Facebook community. Together, your reflections will create a picture of the collective growth that's happened across the early childhood sector this year.
Ready to See Where You Stand?
Reflection is powerful. But knowing exactly where your service stands right now—and what specific steps will move you forward—transforms reflection into action.
The Sustainability Practice Assessment (SPA) reveals your service's current position across all domains of embedded sustainability practice. During a focused conversation on Zoom, we'll work through 12 diagnostic questions together, then discuss what your responses reveal about your service's strengths and opportunities.
During your SPA Session, we'll:
Discuss your service's sustainability practice profile across all dimensions
Identify capabilities your team has already developed (you're doing more right than you think)
Clarify the most effective next actions tailored to your service context
Map a clear path forward that won't overwhelm your educators
After the session, you'll receive a personalised written report with specific recommendations for 2026.
This isn't a generic checklist. It's a strategic conversation about where your service is now and the most effective path forward for your team.
Take Action: Book your free Sustainability Practice Assessment session
Access the EYLF 2.0 Sustainability Principle Decoder and 2025 Sustainability Snapshot for immediate reflection support.
🔍 Access the Decoder https://projectsustainabilitycollective.com.au/decoder
📷 Access the 2025 Sustainability Snapshot https://projectsustainabilitycollective.com.au/sustainability-snapshot
