Each year, our planet becomes more of a wasteland. The planet that our children and our grandchildren will all one day inherit from us is getting covered in plastic bags, used coffee cups and nappies, unwanted clothes and household items, and general domestic and commercial waste.

And then there’s our carbon footprint. Shifting the focus to Australia, we have a lot of work to do, ranking poorly when it comes to energy performance. There are a truckload of statistics we could share here, but here’s one that resonated with me.

Did you know we rank 22nd in the world for transport energy efficiency? I for one can’t wait to see Tesla dominate our roads and help keep our country clean and beautiful.

 

More hideous statistics

Coffee/hot drink cups – did you know that these are not recyclable? Australians use over 1 billion disposable hot drink cups per year. These cups are not recycled they end up in landfill.(1)

Australians use 3.92 billion plastic bags a year, that’s over 10 million new bags being used every day. An estimated 3.76 billion bags or 20,700 tonnes of plastic are disposed of in landfill sites throughout Australia every year. Australians dump 7,150 recyclable plastic bags into landfills every minute or 429,000 bags every hour.(2)

A staggering number about human waste – every day 5.6 million nappies are used in Australia. After they’re used, 5.6 million nappies go to landfill where they sit and release greenhouse gases for approximately 500 years until they break down.(3)

And what about our penchant for fast fashion? The world now consumes about 80 billion new pieces of clothing every year. This is 400% more than the amount we consumed just two decades ago(4). And as we dispose of the items we no longer want, let’s not kid ourselves that they can be re-used as only about 15 per cent of donated clothing is actually sold again locally in opportunity shops.(5)

I could go on for much longer, but you need to know where I’m going with all this!

Most of us are guilty of contributing to this in one way or another. And while many of us talk about sustainability, there needs to be more of us taking action.

 

Sustainability-focused Shoalhaven businesses

We have some incredible businesses in the Shoalhaven that are taking action. Businesses focused on making our region, our country and our planet a better place.

Nowchem

Nowchem, who was last year inducted into the Hall of Fame for Excellence in Sustainability, truly lives and breathes sustainable practices. Along their many sustainability initiatives is their Green Lean initiative, which actively encourages all staff to participate in the development and achievement of its sustainability goals.

John Lamont, MD of Nowchem, believes that allowing staff to work on sustainability in any form from waste reduction, recycling, or work place efficiency helps build pride across the whole organisation.

And when applied across the whole organisation, giving staff at all levels an opportunity to improve the workplace in even a small but personally meaningful way, the results are exponential.

Simmark

Simmark, our winner of Excellence in Small Business in 2016, has a range of initiatives focused not only on reducing our footprint, but on educating the community to help us better understand why we need to, and how we can.

In addition to installing solar systems in homes and businesses across the Shoalhaven and Southern Highlands for more than a decade, Simmark is now also a certified installer of the latest Tesla Powerwall 2. The Powerwall 2 is an innovative battery for your home or small business that stores the sun’s energy.

Simmark also holds energy seminars, where their expert technicians and engineers provide information on gas versus reverse cycle heating, solar power for homes and businesses, hot water solutions (gas/solar/electric) and information on different types and brands of battery storage solutions for solar power.

Silos Estate

Another Excellence in Sustainability Hall of Fame member is Silos Estate. Not only did Silos become carbon neutral in 2008, but it has now sufficiently reduced its environmental footprint to the extent where it is anticipated it will soon become carbon negative, i.e. sequester or offset more carbon than it emits particularly when combined with its tree planting program.

Silos has a plethora of sustainable initiatives, including the recent installation of a Tesla charging station. And long before Tesla was available in Australia, the estate also had an electric vehicle charging station, which was of course powered with renewable energy.

 

Enter our Excellence in Sustainability Award!

Every business that is contributing towards a better, more sustainable planet should be shouting from the rooftops about it. Not just because it’s something you deserve accolades for, but because of the power of influence.

The more awareness we create around the need for sustainable practices, the more opportunity we have to change behaviour.

With Nowchem no longer eligible to enter, we are keen to see who will take out this Award this year.

If your business has implemented sustainability initiatives that help to make our planet a better place, then please consider entering our Excellence in Sustainability Award.

Your business and your team deserve the recognition, and you never know what the exposure might lead to.

Thank you to Bendigo Bank Nowra for sponsoring the Excellence in Sustainability award.

 

Enter the Awards here.

 

Information sources

1. Clean Up Australia

2. Simply Cups 

3. Relivit Nappy Recycling

4. ABC News

5. True Cost – the documentary 

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