Facilities Management

Problem: FM in the Motorola building wanted to be a 'zero waste' office.

Green Office Solution: A Bokashi bucket recycles food waste from the staff kitchen, there is a dedicated bin for plastics and polystyrene recycling, all staff general waste bins have been removed and replaced with a small desk top Mini-Bin to increase use of recycle bins.

Medical and Dental Library

Problem: Staff often have to travel between the QEII Medical Centre, where the Library is located, to the UWA Crawley Campus. This is a distance of about 2km.

Green Office Solution: To encourage staff to not use cars when travelling to the Crawley campus a bicycle has been purchased. Staff can now easily ride to UWA, which saves time, greenhouse emissions and contributes to health as well.

Problem: Communicating Green Office initiatives and driving the Action Plan forward.

Green Office Solution: Green Office is now a permanent agenda item in monthly staff meetings where the latest issues and ideas are discussed.

School of Animal Biology

Problem: The average km driven by all of the vehicles in the school fleet over the last two years was 214,553 km, producing approximately 72 tonnes of CO2 per year. The embodied emissions for a vehicle (CO2 produced in manufacture and servicing) is 17.5 tonnes per tonne of vehicle. The School fleet approximates 14.4 tonnes, i.e. 250 tonnes of CO2 were produced just to put the cars in the yard.

Green Office Solution: The School is offsetting the complete embodied emissions of vehicles in addition to the fuel emissions through the local Carbon Neutral program. Through this program trees will be planted in WA to not only offset emissions but also help tackle salinity and erosion and create habitat.

WA Institute for Medical Research

Problem: The Institute goes through thousands of polystyrene eskys and plastic laboratory tip boxes every year.

Green Office Solution: WAIMR organised for all of their polystyrene and plastics to be recycled by setting up two dedicated bins for the items and getting CLAW Environmental to recycle the products.

Problem: Food waste from the staff kitchen and events.

Green Office Solution: A Bokashi bucket is used to recycle all food waste. The food waste is then used as a resource for staff members home vegie gardens.