Waste Management Through Team Work Case Study
Since Deutsche Bank Place at 126 Phillip Street, Sydney was commissioned almost two years ago, a close working partnership has operated between the key stakeholders in the waste management and resource recovery process. These include Investa; the approximately 3,000 tenants of the building; the waste management contractor Galloway Environmental Waste Management; and cleaning contractor Glad Cleaning Services.
At 30 June 2007, the building's rate of diversion of waste from landfill was 83.42%, with an overall average for the year of 79% per month.
Paper makes up 42% of the building's waste. As it is easily rendered unsalvageable by organic or other waste contamination, it is important to separate paper at the source.
By utilising a unique two compartment waste bin designed and produced by Australian company Paper To Paper, paper products are able to be kept separate from other contaminating waste allowing it to be recycled back into clean white office paper rather than being 'down cycled' to newsprint or cardboard. This delivers energy savings as recycling paper straight back to paper takes a lot less energy than producing paper from virgin pulp and it also achieves a premium in the waste paper market.
100% of the 250 tonnes of used office paper from the building is diverted back to the production of clean paper through Galloway Environmental Waste Management's state-of-the-art materials recovery plant.
All other waste from each desk including glass bottles, aluminium cans, PET bottles, and other plastics go into the top compartment of the under desk bin or in other allocated wheelie bins on each floor, in a process called commingling. They are then taken to Galloway's sorting facility where it is sorted for recycling.
The next important stage in the process after the 'at source' separation is the way the cleaners deal with the waste. A specially designed waste collection trolley was commissioned by Glad to streamline the collection of waste from the under desk bins making collection easier and more efficient for the cleaners. The two bags on the trolleys are colour coded; blue for the paper in the lower compartment of the under desk receptacle and grey for general waste. The larger waste receptacles downstairs are also colour coded blue and grey.
Having the two bags on the trolleys makes it a much more user friendly system. There is a separate collection for cardboard so that the high-value used paper doesn't get downgraded to cardboard.
Any cardboard waste is stacked next to the goods lift on each level. It is collapsed and collected by Glad staff, following email communication from building management to the Palm Pilot of a Glad supervisor.
Galloway EWM provides recycling reports each month to Investa and we pass these on to Glad Cleaning Services, as well as the building's tenants. In this way, everybody gets ownership and can be proud of the result.
The PET material is sent, along with all other plastics, for pelletising which is then made into products such as buckets and car parts. Workstations and chairs in Investa's office at Deutsche Bank Place have a component of this recycled plastic. Glass is colour sorted and sent to be recycled and reused in the glass industry.
All wet waste is sent to Earthpower Technologies where it is converted into methane gas used to power electricity generators. One hundred per cent of wet waste from Deutsche Bank Place is sent for production of clean energy.
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