The Environmental Technology Centre (ETC) at Murdoch University is the United Nations Environment Programme International Environmental Technology Centre (UNEP-IETC) Asia Pacific Cooperation Research Centre.

The ETC's research program includes projects in the areas of water, food, energy, shelter, and material resources, with an emphasis on the integration of these areas to achieve sustainability.

The research program has two elements: basic research initiated and conducted at ETC by staff; and research collaboration with industry and other organisations. The ETC has a strong track record of research and development collaboration with industry.

Many of the ETC's industry partners are small to medium sized local companies who have provided research and development funding and collaborated to commercialise the results of research projects. A number of these projects have resulted in new products and services. These include:

The ETC was established in 1992, and officially inaugurated in 1994 during the National Conference on Technology Transfer in Remote Communities. It received a Centre of Excellence status in 1999 from the Western Australian Centres of Excellence programme. The ETC became a United nations Environment Programme International Environmental technology Centre Cooperative Centre in 2002 having collaborated with them since 1996.

The aim of the ETC is to research, develop and demonstrate environmental technologies, conduct education and training, provide consultancy services to industry, and raise community awareness of environmental technologies. Its facilities are open to local industries wishing to test and monitor products within the university infrastructure.

The ETC occupies a 1.7-hectare site on the Murdoch University campus at which over forty environmentally sustainable technologies have been combined to form an integrated operating demonstration system. The technologies used and researched at the site include climate-sensible buildings, renewable energy systems for power supply and water pumping, aquaculture systems, organic waste management, and permaculture. The integrated approach allows research to be carried out on the important interactions between different technologies, rather than just the effect of a single technology. This gives the ETC a considerable advantage over other research institutions, which focus on single technologies in relative isolation.

The ETC is able to offer holistic and flexible solutions to environmental needs. The ETC's focus is on small-scale environmentally sustainable technologies, which are cost-effective to produce and establish, robust, efficient, and easy to operate and maintain. The aim of this is to maximise the opportunities for user communities to "own" the technology, resulting in greater and more sustained uptake of the technology, higher levels of community awareness and involvement, and ultimately a more successful operation. This approach has been successful in remote areas in Australia, and is highly applicable to communities in developing countries, as well as to urban communities worldwide, particularly when applied in collaboration with industry and government.