Sustainability Stories - Waste Management Ideas in Australia

The Fine Art of Facility Management: Pests and Vermin Facility management is often an intricate art form, balancing service quality and budget constraints. In this post, we focus primarily on managing pests and vermin, a critical aspect of maintaining a facility. Over the years, we've engaged with numerous facility management professionals. Each one has their unique approach to handling facility services and budgets. Generally, these approaches can be categorized into three distinct philosophies: Service-Oriented : These managers prioritize service quality. They are willing to spend reasonably to ensure services are timely and executed correctly. Cost-Focused : This group aims to minimize costs wherever possible. They prefer cheaper services and avoid unnecessary expenses. Value-Seeking : The rarest of the three, these managers strive to balance cost and quality. They seek the highest-grade services at the lowest possible prices. However...

  It’s morning in Sydney New South Wales. The sun rises over the iconic Opera House as the ferries chug steadily by, to and from from Circular Quay. The traffic trundles over the Coathanger – otherwise known as the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Sydney’s office workers start their working days, with cups of takeaway coffee tucked in their spare hands. But this isn’t really the start of the day. Oh no. Rewind back about six or eight hours, to about midnight. In the office towers, the cleaners are finishing cleaning up after the day. The pubs are busy, the restaurants are closing. And the bins are full. A fleet of waste trucks is patrolling the city streets and laneways, visiting business after business, like huge, metal bees visiting strange flowers after dark. To many people, waste trucks and garbage removal is an annoyance. In fact, it’s a necessity. And the way its done today is far more efficient and safe than perhaps at any time in human history.   From the early days of...

Is there a reason for businesses to go green?  Is there a reason not to? In this post we explore some of the benefits to a business "Going Green" - we actually consider there is so many upsides there is really no reason NOT to Go Green!   Another way of saying the business case for going green – is to say, the business case for sustainability. Or perhaps even the business case for preserving the bio diversity we have, keeping species from going extinct, minimising climate change and keeping the planet alive. Remember when saving the world meant saving it from some evil arch overlord who was bent on world domination? It seems we have achieved that. Not the saving the world part but we, as a species have certainly achieved domination over the natural environment in all its might. So does that make us the evil that the world needs saving from? There is an argument that could be made on that all righ t. A case, you could say. Now lets talk business. There are three main...

  Running a big facility like a huge building or a manufacturing plant? It's definitely a juggling act! You've got all these different folks using the space – let's call them stakeholders, because that's the fancy term nowadays. And guess what? Each one of them has their own wants, needs, and expectations. Now, here's where it gets interesting for the facility manager : you've gotta balance all these desires with the bottom line of keeping the place profitable and following the rules. When you think of a building, profit might not be the first thing that pops into your head. But the truth is, running a building costs money, and those folks renting out space? They're paying for it. Sometimes the building owners handle all the bills and just charge the tenants their share, and sometimes everyone pays separately. Let's talk trash, shall we? Waste management might not seem like a big deal, but it's actually super important. If it's a pain to deal wit...

 There.  We started This is a blog all about Sustainability and waste management.  Both have a huge role to play in terms of what sort of planet we leave behind for the next generation.  As we think of relevant items, or come across them in our travels, we will publish them here! Thanks for calling by - it shows you care! 2024 Update Wow - after first publishing this page back in 2021 the world sure has changed. Not always for the better. From an environmental perspective though, there has been some positive change. We keep an eye on a number of news sites that report on sustainability items. It's pretty clear that the planet is in one of the greatest environmental crises ever. And yet, back in 2021 we would go about things the same as before, like a slow march of lemmings towards an inevitable fate.  But it didn't have to be that way. So many people for so long have railed about this, waved placards, protested, and so on. Then many jumped back in their cars and...

  When you are in the game of constructing big buildings, or demolishing them, one of the keys to sustainability, as well as keeping your costs low, is how well you manage your business waste. Let’s explore that. Not many people would consider that waste management matters much, given that it is a small part of most businesses, but from a construction perspective, it matters big time. When you consider that many large contracts, particularly government infrastructure projects, require some sort of environmental reporting as a condition of engagement, this starts to become clearer. But what sort of reporting? How is it measured? And how do we implement systems that get it right? And how to we encourage our people to use these systems in a way that means they will deliver the result we need? All good and fair questions. Lets look at a typical construction site. They will use a variety of materials, many of which are recyclable, if separated into individual waste streams. T...

  Does your business have sites all over the country? Perhaps one in the main State and Territory capitals? When a business grows it’s footprint, to the point where there are multiple locations, there are two main paths they follow. Many start by leaving control over suppliers at a branch level. And while this can be very effective at building strong relationships, as well as good local control over service quality, it does pose challenges for the business as a whole. These challenges often take time to manifest, and usually only get noticed when a business tries to measure performance nationally. Without standard terminology and providers, it gets difficult to apply standards across different states as the benchmarks are all different. It also often means that the business struggles to leverage the best prices from suppliers as it is not using its full procurement footprint to drive costs down. The flow on effects from these two elements are reduced quality control, as wel...