Education student Brendan Davey and the new recycling bins.

$10,000 to Do the Right Thing

The Melbourne Campus recently received a $10,000 grant to further develop it's Green Office campaign.

Signage on the bins carries a recycling awareness campaign message "Do the Right Thing, Use the Right Bin" aimed at encouraging people to make the effort to not only put their rubbish in the bin, but to put it in the right bin.

This initiative, which aims to reduce environmental impacts across the campus, has been led by the Packaging Stewardship Forum (PSF) of the Australian Food and Grocery Council.

Margaret Burgess, Facilities Systems Officer at the Melbourne Campus said, "The grant allowed Campus Operations to move forward with the implementation of the Green Office campaign by providing additional funds to supply new recycling bins and refurbish existing ones.  Bins are now visible and labelled to encourage the separation of general and recyclable waste within the campus."

This initiative will contribute to the PSF's business plan target of collecting 1000 additional tonnes of PET bottles and 300 additional tonnes of aluminium cans per annum for recycling by June 2010 from higher education institutions, and help meet ACU National's environmentally sustainability objectives.

Campus Operations conducted a waste audit this month, wading through all the rubbish collected from the campus, which was weighed and assessed to see how we currently fair in the recycling stakes.

The results were promising: "While we are doing quite well with recycling paper and cardboard, our performance in recycling plastic needs some improvement and we can do much better," Margaret said.