Going green: Case study - ABC Green Futures Project

In 2006, national broadcaster ABC made a commitment to reduce their carbon emissions, water use and waste output - and to do it all without spending additional public money.

Promoted by Lawyers Weekly • 04 February 2011 • Big Law
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In 2006, national broadcaster ABC made a commitment to reduce their carbon emissions, water use and waste output - and to do it all without spending additional public money.

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As such, the Green Futures Project was set up to oversee a nationwide "greenover" which was kick-started with an audit to see how they were doing. In November 2007, the project's official targets were announced, with the ABC aiming to cut emissions by 40 per cent by 2020, and by 60 per cent by 2050.

Why did they go green?

According to ABC Green Futures National Coordinator Megan Shaw, the motivation behind the project simply came down to taking responsibility.

"We have to reduce our impact on the environment and, as a national broadcaster, it is really important that we try to do our bit," she says.

"We don't have all the answers, but we are certainly giving it our best shot. We decide to be innovative in so many ways, with technology and content, so sustainability is the logical next step in how we do our business."

What have they achieved?

For the financial year ending 2010, the ABC managed to reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill by a whopping 40 per cent. This was in conjunction with the following initiatives:

- putting in sub-metering for self-auditing and tracking purposes (if you can't measure it, you can't manage it!);

- installing efficient light and water fittings;

- encouraging "active travel" by providing new and improved bike facilities;

- purchasing hybrid vehicles as fleet vehicles;

- establishing a "Freecycle" intranet site where staff can post an item or piece of office equipment that they don't use and leave their extension, so someone else can use it rather than buy it new;

- cutting delivery days to once every two days instead of every day to cut down on fuel and transport costs;

- installing rainwater tanks in regional centres.

The experience so far

According to Shaw, one of the hardest parts of her job is implementing a new way of doing things and getting people on board.

- "Staff engagement is quite difficult, as is changing people's habits," she says.

"Until we make things easy for people and make the sustainable way the easy option and the most obvious option, it's going to be difficult for people to think about that way as the first and foremost way of doing things. You've got to persist and remind people."

- And Shaw says the best way to deal with this is to start with the little things, the easiest solutions and, she adds, make sure you can follow through.

-"Be able to measure where you're at … so you can actually measure you're success and performance. It's important to have something to keep staff interested. You need to be able to report to them fairly regularly and have a target you can reach," she says.

So will they reach their 2020 and 2050 targets?

- "Some of them are looking a little bit slim to meet by that stage, particularly with our energy use because … it's an energy-intensive industry," she says.

- "But things don't happen overnight … things take time."

What's next?

The next move for the project is, apart from offering a swag of Keep Cups to staff who like their daily coffee, to move from making environmental choices voluntary to making them compulsory. One example, says Walsh, is a soon-to-be-implemented scheme where the IT department switches off everyone's PC in the evenings and re-boots them in the mornings.

"At the moment, the shut-down rate is not very good," she says. "We are going to take those choices out of people's hands. They have to opt-out rather than opt-in."

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