There’s no clearer sustainability misstep than piles of plastic overflowing from a rubbish bin. How are some of the Property Council’s members leaning in to close the circularity loop?
Waste is a very visible sustainability challenge. In fact, Australia sends 67 million tonnes of rubbish to landfill each year, according to the National Waste Report. But many leaders from across the real estate spectrum are stepping up with inspiring and innovative ideas to close the loop.
Global worming
“One of ISPT’s ‘flag on the hill’ ESG targets for 2025 is zero organic waste sent to landfill,” says Maynard, ISPT’s general manager for sustainability and technical services. “To meet that target, our total property waste is weighed and reported monthly.”
Measuring and reporting provides ISPT with a clear picture of the problem, and has helped to kickstart new partnerships, like the one ISPT has established with Global Worming.
“Organic waste is collected from tenancy kitchens, retail cafés and coffee shops across three commercial offices in Canberra and diverted to special worm bins. The waste is transformed into ‘worm juice’ – a highly concentrated liquid fertiliser that is used on gardens across ISPT’s precincts,” Maynard notes.
“We are diverting over one tonne a month from our largest farm at 4 National Circuit,” add Sherice Kazzi, Knight Frank’s senior marketing manager with responsibility for ISPT’s ACT portfolio.
In May, ISPT launched ‘Worm Week’. “We offered worm farm tours to educate people about what can and can’t go into the worm farm in their building. We also hosted an indoor plant sale, and our building customers could purchase the worm juice. People loved it,” Kazzi says.
ISPT is also piloting insect processing in partnership with Beyond Ag in Victoria. Six retail and commercial assets send around 1,800 kilograms of organic waste to Beyond Ag’s facility each week. With the help of insects, the waste metamorphosises into livestock feed, organic fertiliser and pet food. “We expect to scale this up to 10 tonnes a day,” Maynard says.
Maggot magic!
At Barangaroo in Sydney, Lendlease has tested an onsite maggot farm as a low carbon and circular waste processing solution. The system, provided by food waste innovator Goterra, “is mobile, fully automated, has a five-tonne processing capacity per day, and costs less to run than traditional food waste processing,” explains Lendlease’s regional sustainability manager, James Wewer.
How does the system work? Food waste is collected and macerated, and then fed to maggots that are “fully contained in a farm controlled by robotics and software”.
“The container is emptied every two weeks and refilled with juvenile maggots, with outputs sent to support urban agriculture and as animal feed for chickens. Compared with offsite processing – with transport costs, emissions and a lower value end product – this onsite process provides a viable sustainable and cost-effective alternative, with fewer greenhouse gas emissions,” Wewer says.
Systematic salvaging
Burwood Brickworks was the world’s first shopping centre to achieve Living Building Challenge Petal certification in April 2021. To meet the rating system’s strict criteria, Frasers Property Australia implemented a range of measures from design through to deconstruction. More than 80 different salvaged products were integrated into the base building and fitouts, and 99 per cent of construction waste was diverted from landfill, for example.
Stephen Choi, Frasers Property’s Living Building Challenge manager, shares one overriding learning: “the focus must be continually higher up the waste hierarchy”. That is, eliminating, reducing and reusing first, “with downcycling and energy recovery being a part of the approach, but in the right order”.
At Burwood Brickworks, waste management in operation is a partnership with tenants, as more than a dozen separate reuse and recycling streams are collected and diverted from landfill, Choi adds.
Burwood Brickworks provides a strong foundation for tenant success stories that help customers think differently too. Woolworths’ instore shopping trolleys and carry baskets at Burwood Brickworks are made from locally sourced recycled milk bottles. The store also introduced the first cleaning product refill station, where customers can refill their existing bottles, and trialled a battery collection system that, on completion of rollout, will offer the largest network of battery collection units in Australia.
Reuse revolution
Office fitout produces a lot of waste. The Better Buildings Partnership, for instance, estimates just 21 per cent of fitout waste across Sydney is diverted from landfill each year – a massive 25,000 tonnes of materials.
The Property Industry Foundation’s Furniture Fund has partnered with removalist company Egans to resell, reuse and remanufacture unwanted furniture. Proceeds go to the PIF House Program.
The World’s Biggest Garage Sale is also collaborating with Officeworks to repair, repurpose, recycle and resell products that would otherwise sit in landfill. Early results from the partnership show that 90 per cent of the products are resold, and a further eight per cent recycled.
Evalin Ling, Probuild’s Victorian sustainability manager, says this approach has huge potential to drive down waste sent to landfill. But this isn’t a process that starts the day a tenant moves out. “It starts by considering the lifecycle of a fitout during design – and not only furniture, but finishes and fittings too,” she says.
“More and more companies are designing and building furniture made from reused and recycled materials that are easy to disassemble, have a buy-back program at their end of life and are third party certified so they can demonstrate their sustainability credentials transparently,” she adds.
Innovation acceleration
There are many sources of sustainability optimism in the waste space.
Investa’s online game, Binder, gamifies the process of recycling to engage tenants. The GPT Group’s coffee cup library has made significant inroads into contamination in mixed recycling bins. Dexus has cut carbon emissions by almost 20 per cent across 100-plus fitout projects. And Mirvac has recently unveiled an apartment, developed in partnership with the UNSW Centre of Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT), where flooring, furniture and fittings are made from waste glass and textiles.
But with just 8.6 per cent of global waste recycled each year, the shift from linear to circular thinking requires systems-wide change, new business models, and next level collaboration across the value chain. Where do we start?
Dr Gerard Healey, the University of Melbourne’s manager for estate performance and sustainability, says the starting point is to “reframe issues to unlock opportunities”. He points to the City of Bendigo as an example.
“With the Eaglehawk Landfill due to reach capacity in a few years, rather than develop a new landfill to replace the old one, the City sought tenders for a ‘post landfill region’,” he explains.
Healey also subscribes to the “measurement leads to better management” mantra. The University of Melbourne turned to academic experts to analyse procurement and waste data before developing its waste management approach, he says.
Healey was surprised to discover that just five per cent of the university’s waste came from its own procurement channels. The rest was brought in by on-campus food and beverage suppliers, students and staff – mostly in the form of food waste and packaging.
“This highlighted to me the need to work collaboratively with retail tenants on campus, such as through the Choose to Reuse Plate Program, as well as the importance of education and supporting behaviour change for the university community,” Healey says.
Drawing a circle
Evalin Ling is positive about the property industry’s potential to make a difference.
“While there are currently some materials that can’t reused, repurposed or recycled effectively, once the industry recognises a gap, it can be filled by innovative ideas – or by design solutions that rethink with lifecycle impacts in mind.”
James Wewer’s tip is to focus on “designing out waste” from the earliest phase of the project. “This could include re-lifing an existing building, or designing for dematerialisation, adaptability and disassembly for new buildings.”
Wewer likes the concept of a “materials passport” which “details all of the materials used in the construction of the building or precinct that could contribute to a more circular economy”.
ISPT’s Alicia Maynard has spent nearly two decades thinking about how to bring together “closed loop thinking with design principles of long-life, low-energy and loose fit”. She says turning waste from a problem to a resource requires two simple premises: behaviour change and systems thinking. “We won’t solve this challenge alone. Collaboration is the key to the circular economy.”
Want to learn more? The Property Council Academy has anytime online courses on good performing waste in buildings.