Sustainability transitions are increasingly characterised by the need for public engagement in ecological care, such as urban greening, biodiversity observation, habitat restoration, and environmental maintenance. However, under most policy frameworks, such a task is either provided through diminishing public services or through voluntary work. The paper contends that the present overdependence on voluntary ecological work is a failure within the political economy of sustainability transitions. A new institutional form, "Civic Ecological Labour," is proposed, understood as paid, part-time, locally rooted ecological work that falls between employment, voluntary work, and the welfare system. Based on the theories of ecological economics, institutional economics, and public value theory, this paper proposes a conceptual and methodological framework for what we call Civic Ecological Labour Infrastructures: the governance, legal, financial, and organisational systems necessary to integrate ecological care into the heart of local economies. We examine the ideological assumptions implicit in contemporary regimes of labour and environmental governance, demonstrate how they necessarily externalise ecological care, and outline the institutional design principles necessary to facilitate scalable, inclusive, and just ecological work. This article makes a contribution to ecological economics in that it redefines labour, care, and stewardship as prime economic functions in the transition to sustainability rather than mere moral actions. This article introduces a new analytical term that describes the provision of public ecological goods and outlines some design options that can be applied on the municipal, community, or hybrid levels.