In 2025, the Industry and Community Project Units (ICPU) program collaborated with the City of Sydney, Taronga Zoo and the University's Sustainability team to tackle real-world problems in the sustainability space.
In partnership with industry, interdisciplinary student teams worked on several projects – from improving cycling navigation signage to better support everyday urban riders, to advancing conservation and education initiatives, and developing smarter approaches to waste management. These projects, each developing innovative solutions to some of our most complex sustainability challenges, highlight the power of collaboration between industry, students and community.
City of Sydney
The City of Sydney plays a central role in shaping Sydney as a sustainable, inclusive, and globally competitve city. Guided by it's Cultural Strategy, Economic Development Strategy, Social Sustainability Policy (City for All), and a suite of place-based programs, the City aims to ensure that urban transformation enchances quality of life for all communities.
Led by Dr Jinqi Xu, Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Education at the University of Sydney, this project invited students to consider how to enhance urban cycling navigation and rethink wayfinding for everyday riders.
Students embraced the complexity of the challenge, presenting campaigns to promote safer cycling, pitching problems and practical solutions. Their protoypes included printed and digital pamphlets, keyring merchandise, photo montages, and graphics – each offering fresh ideas for clearer, more intuitive cycling navigation across the city.
Taronga Zoo
Taronga Zoo aims to inspire and impower people to act for the wild through immersive experiences and impactful conservation programs, driving revenue and enhancing accessibility and engagement for the community.
In this ICPU project, students explored how after-dark programming could be designed to maximise engagement while minimising disruption to wildlife. Their work considered innovations in lighting, sound, accessibility, immersive technologies, and data-driven monitoring to create experiences that are both captivating and conservation-minded.
An extensive depth of research led to creative marketing plans, with each group of students presenting their curated ideas in bringing Taronga to life after dark. Their proposals balanced ingenuity with practicality, ensuring that any future programming supports the Zoo's conservation values while considering its ongoing financial sustainability.
Students get creative about how to bring Taronga Zoo to life after dark while minimising disruption to wildlife.
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LinkSustainability at Sydney
This ICPU project was in partnership with the University's Sustainability team. Led by Dr María Florencia Amigó, Interdisciplinary Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney, students were invited to learn more about the sustainable strategies implemented across campus, including waste management, sustainability education, reducing carbon emissions, and managing the impact of AI and digital practices.
To ground their work in real-world context, students participated in a campus sustainability tour led by Madeleine Culp, the University's Engagement Specialist in the Sustainability team. This hands-on experience provided valuable insights to the University's waste systems and the challenges of driving behaviour change at scale.
Building on this understanding, students presented insights around how to promote sustainability on campus and mitigate persistent environmental challenges, such as reducing waste from single-use food containers. Students came up with a range of innovative solutions, including embedding sustainability more deeply within curriculum.
The discussions and recommendations that emerged from the projects reaffirmed some of the Sustainability team's proposals, particularly around the need to build student and staff awareness and capability on a range of sustainability challenges across campus. Ultimately, students' work offered fresh perspectives and practical ideas that aligned with the University's long-term sustainability goals.
Students learn about the University's sustainability initiatives, including our waste management engagement and education program.
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LinkSustainability has been a central focus of the ICPU program and aligns with the University's sustainability strategy (pdf, 4MB), which aims to implement world-leading sustainability research and education into everyday campus life.
Whether it's reimagining cycling navigation, designing wildlife-sensitive after-dark experiences or strengthening sustainable practices on campus, collaboration between students, industry and community gave way to creative solutions for complex sustainability problems.
These projects highlight the power of student-driven innovation and reaffirms the importance of integrating sustainability into learning experiences that prepare graduates to lead a positive change within and beyond the University.