Energy Conservation Sydney is an engineering consultancy motivated to help clients find sustainable ways to manage rising energy and waste prices. The team of engineers work with clients to develop a focused action plan ensuring targets are met, without sacrificing service levels, output or convenience. Internally, Kyle Sawyer, Resource Analyst is leading the way on taking the practical steps necessary to reduce their business footprint. Energy Conservation Sydney claims that they 'are evidence that no business is too small to improve the way they do business by becoming more sustainable. You don’t need to have a huge impact – you just need to be good citizens.'
Recycling & Green Initiatives
Vision
Energy Conservation is motivated to minimise the amount of waste the organisation sends to landfill by taking practical steps towards a zero-waste business.
Planning & Implementation
Part of the initial process included conducting research on what services existed that could make the organisation’s vision of a zero-waste business attainable. The organisation utilised the services and information from organisations such as Planet Ark’s BusinessRecycling website, Terracycle and REDcycle, providing a springboard into a recycle-friendly office space. Additionally, engaging with the above organisations allowed Kyle to source the relevant signage to easily communicate the changes the organisation would be undergoing to staff. It simplified the transition by not adding to his colleagues already full schedules.
Results and Benefits
Energy Conservation are a great example of the small but positive steps any business, large or small, can take to reduce, recycle and implement green initiatives into the workplace.
Their successes so far include:
- Introducing a three-stream source separation in line with building services
- Collecting printer toner cartridges for recycling
- Introducing a soft plastics collection for drop-off at their local IGA and a battery collection for recycling with Council services.
- Recycling e-waste and expanded polystyrene foam off-site.
These steps have allowed the whole office to downsize their general waste collection to a small benchtop tidy bin which is emptied weekly.
Challenges & the Future
While there are easily accessible recycling bins around the office, it has been a challenge to locate convenient services for difficult-to-recycle items. However, Kyle has been finding creative solutions for such items, including hand-delivering EPS foam to the fish market for recycling. Moving forward, Energy Conservation are considering introducing a Bokashi bin or coffee grounds collection to reduce office organic waste.
