How a Sunshine Coast placemaking studio embeds sustainability into creative practice with purpose and measurable impact.
POMO Creative is an award-winning creative placemaking practice with offices in the Sunshine Coast and Melbourne, operating its headquarters from an environmentally sensitive studio in Nambour.
Founded by Design Director Stephen Burton, the business was built on a vision to address a critical gap in the urban design market: the disconnect between high-level strategic thinking and what physically gets built. Working across public realm projects with local governments, designers, artists and communities, the POMO Creative team creates places that reflect local identity, culture and a strong sense of place.
This approach has earned POMO Creative national recognition, including Palmwoods Town Square (winner of the AILA National Gold for Civic Design) and the Miles CBD Streetscape Revitalisation (winner of the 2023 AILA QLD Regional Achievement Award).
Designing for legacy, not short-term outcomes
Over the past decade, POMO Creative has undergone a deliberate and challenging evolution.
A key turning point was a strategic shift away from short term, transactional design work towards projects that create lasting public value.
“We moved away from top-down design and committed to a bottom-up approach,” Stephen says. “That meant learning how to translate complex community narratives into physical outcomes that actually solve problems in public places.”
While this shift required patience and a complete redesign of internal workflows, it delivered tangible results.
Community led projects such as Palmwoods Town Square demonstrate this in practice, showing that sustainability, local materials and circular economy principles can coexist with design excellence and achieve national recognition.
Sustainability as responsibility and legacy
For POMO Creative, sustainability has never been limited to reducing office energy bills.
“Sustainability for us is about legacy,” Stephen says. “It is about responsibility and creating public places that are environmentally sensitive, durable and meaningful over time.”
This approach has been long practiced intuitively. The Bush Studio HQ was designed and built as a case study in sustainable design, demonstrating how commercial spaces can coexist with old growth vegetation without heavy earthworks.
The project was widely recognised, winning a Queensland state award for Best Sustainable Commercial Design and being named a finalist in the National Sustainability Design Awards, (judged by Kevin McCloud of Grand Designs). Through passive design and sustainable materiality, it achieved an estimated 80% reduction in energy consumption compared to standard commercial builds.
However, these efforts were not formally measured or embedded into governance.
“We realised we were practicing sustainable design, but we had not yet embedded it as a non-negotiable decision-making structure within the business,” Stephen says.
Why ecoBiz made sense for a micro creative practice
POMO Creative joined ecoBiz in 2024 and continued through the ecoBiz Micro and Remote Program in 2025, supporting small and remote businesses with limited capacity to measure traditional resource use.
For a design led practice, ecoBiz provided opportunities to strengthen how sustainability is planned, measured and communicated. It offered structure, recognition and practical tools to organise and validate existing work, without adding unnecessary complexity.
Three key drivers shaped the decision to participate:
- Recognition for sustainability initiatives already embedded in the business
- Advocacy, demonstrating leadership within the small business and creative sectors
- Commercial positioning, aligning verified sustainability credentials with evolving government procurement requirements
Before ecoBiz, sustainability at POMO Creative existed largely through instinct rather than systems.
“We were doing the right things, but we did not have the data, frameworks or policies to verify and improve them,” Stephen says.
With just two full-time equivalent staff and a flexible project-based team, POMO Creative operates as a micro business. Like many small consultancies, its energy and waste use are comparable to a household, which makes traditional consumption-based reductions difficult to measure.
ecoBiz enabled a more tailored approach, focusing on governance, frameworks and embedding sustainability into everyday decision making.
Embedding sustainability into every decision
Through ecoBiz coaching, POMO Creative reframed what sustainability looks like for micro businesses.
“As a business our size, we could not significantly reduce consumption any further. Our energy and waste use is similar to a household,” Stephen says. “What ecoBiz helped us do was pivot from focusing on consumption to embedding sustainable thinking into our decision making.”
That shift was transformative.
Sustainability is now a formal lens applied to every design and operational decision. When designing public realm elements such as street furniture, lighting or structures, the team evaluates carbon capture potential, end of life outcomes, transport impacts, material sourcing and circular economy opportunities.
“These are not accidental choices,” Stephen says. “They are the result of a framework that mandates sustainable thinking as part of the design process.”
From intuition to accreditation
Since joining ecoBiz, POMO Creative has implemented a comprehensive suite of sustainability actions and frameworks, achieving ecoBiz Gold Micro Star Partner accreditation after completing 88% of applicable actions on the Micro and Remote Program Action Checklist.
This work is now reflected across projects and operations through tangible, measurable outcomes.
Sustainability policies and KPIs guide decision making, with impact demonstrated through results such as waste diverted from landfill and the use of 100% locally sourced materials in projects including Miles CBD and Palmwoods Town Square. These outcomes also strengthen alignment with Queensland Government procurement priorities, particularly around local benefit and environmental performance.
The value of the right conversation and leading by example
While ecoBiz coaching initially focused on traditional consumption metrics, a later session tailored to micro businesses unlocked real value.
“That conversation made it clear that ecoBiz was not just for bigger businesses,” Stephen says. “It was about thinking, frameworks and governance. That gave us confidence to move forward.”
For POMO Creative, ecoBiz did not add complexity. It provided clarity.
With a small core team, the practice challenges the perception that sustainability leadership is reserved for large organisations.
“Anybody can do this,” Stephen says. “It is not about scale, it is about intention and process.”
Now verified as an ecoBiz Gold Micro Star Partner, the business is well positioned to advocate for sustainability, strengthen partnerships and deliver public places that leave a positive environmental and social legacy.
Turning intention into action
For many small businesses, sustainability can feel overwhelming at first, but POMO Creative’s experience shows that meaningful action often starts with a single step.
“A lot of people want to be more sustainable but do not know where to begin,” says Stephen. “With ecoBiz, businesses gain a clear starting point, practical guidance and support. Once you get started, it does not take long to pull together and it is not a huge drain on your time or resources.”
ecoBiz has helped the team transform sustainability from intention into a measurable and strategic part of the business, showing that even micro businesses can lead with impact.
The ecoBiz program is proudly supported through the Queensland Government’s Recycling and Jobs Fund
