Moving upstream to prevent waste

With the appointment of our first Sustainability Manager in 2006, the University began its journey of monitoring and measuring all forms of solid waste and the development of key resource recovery systems. Some milestones on this journey have included:

2006 - 2009

• Container recycling for bottles and cans introduced with bins across all campuses

 2010 - 2015

• Office recycling programme piloted in the Faculty of Arts
• Office recycling programme rolled out across all existing staff offices, and integrated into the fitout of new offices 

2016 - 2020

• Food waste diversion trial in first year accommodation halls (O'Rorke, Whitaker, and University Hall and Apartments) and Quad café
• Waste Minimisation Specialist role created in Facilities Management
• Food waste diversion formalised and expanded to include all catered accommodation halls and Faculty of Science buildings 
• Project team for food waste diversion trial wins Vice Chancellor's Award for Environmental Sustainability

2020 - Present

• 6 Green Star Building 201 reopens and has a coordinated food scrap collection service in all student and staff kitchens

Resource recovery systems can help to keep materials in circulation and out of landfill, but designing waste out of a process is better from an overall resource use, emissions and climate perspective. In recent years, the university took this approach in its adaptive reuse of the B201 building. Instead of demolishing B201 and starting again, the project team decided to reuse the concrete frame in the redesign. This expedited the timeline of the rebuild, and significantly reduced construction costs, construction and demolition waste, and emissions. 

In the catering and retail space, several initiatives have been initiated by the Environment and Sustainability Office and Campus Life teams over the last decade to prevent waste. Notable projects include:

• Development of the Sustainable Events Guide and Sustainable Events Checklist, which has guidance for event planners about rethinking disposable and single-use items and designing waste-free events. 
• The introduction of a mug library at the B2 Social café. The mugs were sourced from op shops and the decant of Epsom Campus. Customers can borrow a mug, use it for a takeaway drink and return it to the library when convenient.
• A milk supply and dispenser system at B2 Social café. Instead of standard two litre plastic bottles, the milk is delivered in ten litre refillable buckets, which are hooked up to a milk dispenser. With the push of a button, the dispenser releases a shot of milk for the barista to froth – no more and no less. Empty buckets are collected for sterilising and refilling, and the cycle continues. 
• A Single-Use Reduction project with campus food retailers, which involved auditing food and drink packaging and supporting retailers to change some of their defaults. For example, a sushi outlet introduced a refillable bottle of soy sauce for customers to use and stopped including single-use soy sauce containers as a default in their pre-packaged options.