Environmental sustainability is central to the Mullum Creek vision. We believe in homes that blend harmoniously with their environment and leave a light footprint for future generations. This development has evolved through 20 years of thought and research on how best to apply and give life to these principles in our community at Mullum Creek.

Key to these objectives are the estate’s Design Guidelines, created to ensure that homes incorporate the most important sustainability measures currently available. These include:

• design and construction of 7.5 star energy efficient homes,
• the generation, use and storage of solar power,
• 3-D building and vegetation envelopes to retain access to sunlight,
• use of environmentally and socially responsible construction materials and practices, and
• high capacity rainwater tanks for domestic and garden needs.

These measures ensure that homes at Mullum Creek are well placed to respond to Melbourne’s changing climate, including higher temperatures and drought stress. With thermal efficiency, good light, and flow-through ventilation, these homes will be comfortable and pleasurable to live in, while significant reductions in energy and water consumption means they will be less expensive to operate well into the future.

Other documents commissioned by Mullum Creek to help achieve better environmental outcomes can be found in the Building Green, section of the website. These include:

• guide to the use and sourcing of sustainable timber,
• guides to selecting selecting steel, clay, concrete and cement products with lower environmental impacts, and
• guide to selecting garden plants, that promote maintenance of solar access, biodiversity, and the establishment of home orchards.

Mullum Creek has assembled a group of architects and designers who are familiar with the principles and practice of sustainable building and design, and we offer all residents the opportunity to work with one of these practitioners to develop a preliminary design for their homes. This offer is the centrepiece of the Design Incentives available to all lot owners, to help achieve the objectives and detailed requirements of the Mullum Creek Design Guidelines. More on this can be found here.

The aim of Mullum Creek is to contribute to the growth of environmental practices that promote better environmental performance and action on climate change not just within the Mullum Creek community, but also more widely. To this end, all of the content, documentation and information we have produced for Mullum Creek is freely available to anyone who can make use of it. We would be delighted to know that the material has value beyond the boundaries of our project.

An important aspect of environmentally and socially responsible design practice is to undertake independent performance reviews to verify any claims to the achievement of high standards in this regard. Accordingly, Mullum Creek has been reviewed and certified by the nationally recognised EnviroDevelopment Certification Programme of the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA). The certification is awarded to projects that attain high standards in the areas of ecosystems management, waste, energy, materials, water and community living. Mullum Creek is one of only a handful of projects in Victoria to meet the scheme’s standards in all six of these areas.

In July 2017, Paul Haar from the Mullum Creek Design Review Committee gave his personal reflections on the Mullum Creek project in a presentation at the Ecocity World Summit. An annotated file of his powerpoint presentation can be found in the link below.