Sustainable Business Practice

The Bower strives to be a model green business in all areas, from waste management to electrical consumption and personal practice.

Our efforts were in acknowledged in 2009 by Marrickville Council when we were awarded the Leadership in Sustainability prize.

We practice what we preach to show you just how simple it can be to minimise your eco-footprint at home. Much of our sustainable practice is about making simple choices - to walk or ride where possible, to worm farm our organic waste, and reuse materials.

Many of the things we do are things that you can do at home without making big changes to your lifestyle.

Our building is a show piece of reuse and you can read more about that on the Our Building web page.

Transport

• Most staff live locally and walk or cycle to work.
• We have bike racks to encourage others to do the same.
• Public transport access (nearby bus stop 428) are promoted at all opportunities.
• Collections and deliveries are organised by geographic zones to minimise excessive driving.
• In 2007 The Bower received an NRMA grant to complete a bio-diesel experiment. The truck was converted to run on biodiesel, with the cost, consumption and maintenance tracked over the course of 07/08. Today, the new truck  is larger and can achieve a greater volume of collections and deliveries with a minimal increase in petrol consumption.

Office

• Only scrap paper is used for note taking.
• All envelopes used by the Bower are donated and/or reused.
• Almost all stationery goods are reused (donated, not purchased new) including staplers, staples, stickylabels, sticky tape, rubber bands, pens, hole punches, calculators, etc.
• 100% post-consumer recycled paper is used for printing and photocopying.
• Most office equipment has been salvaged, or purchased secondhand, included computers and printers.
• All office furniture is secondhand; desks, chairs, tables, fans, heaters, shelving, bookcases, etc
• We use self-refills or remanufactured toner cartridges for our printers
• All cabling for computer networks telephone systems are donations in active reuse.
• All electric appliances turned off at night to reduce ‘phantom energy loads’ from standby functions.
• Computers and printers are set to energy saver mode settings to ‘sleep’ when not is use

Staff Area

• All furnishing in our staff kitchen is secondhand; the sink, fridge, cups, microwave, toaster, cutlery,whiteboard, table, etc.
• We buy biodegradable dishwashing liquid.
• We encourage reusable lunch containers over disposable wraps and bags.
• We collect organic waste including teabags, fruit and vegetables etc for our worm farm (which, contrary to popular thought is neither gross nor smelly).
• A large capacity rainwater tank harvests rain from the Bower roof for dish washing and cleaning.
• Mains water is reserved only for drinking.
• All electric appliances turned off at night to reduce ‘phantom energy loads’ from standby functions.

Workshops

• We have two workshops - an electrical and a timber repair, dedicated to supporting reuse culture in store and in the community.
• All hand tools and most power tools in workshop have been rescued from other people’s discards.
• Timber repairs are conducted with donated/salvaged hardware where possible.
• Timber workshop space  makes significant use of skylighting.
• Timber workshop made entirely of secondhand materials, the only exception being the new concrete floor.
• All electric appliances turned off at night to reduce ‘phantom energy loads’ from standby functions.

Gardens

• We water our gardens with buckets and only when necessary to minimise excess run off.
• We mulch our garden to maximise water retention.
• Native species feature in our front gardens and rear landscaping to minimise need for extensive watering.

Waste

• We divert, very conservatively, 200 tonnes of ‘waste’ per annum from the landfill, through our normal operations.
• We compost garden trimmings.
• We recycle glass, plastic, aluminium and tin through the council collection system.
• We use a commercial paper and cardboard recycling service.
• We do drop-offs to scrap metal merchants of unsold metal goods.
• We operate a Reuse Referral Service database of close to 1000 secondhand businesses in Sydney.

Energy Consumption

• Strawbale is a natural insulator.
• Passive solar design minimises need for artificial lighting and air conditioning.
• Extensive skylights and windows are used to minimise the need for electrical lighting.
• Solar array generates all the buildings energy needs, excess power is fed back into the Addison Road Community Centre to benefit all. This was generously donated by Green force in 2012.
• All electric appliances turned off at night to reduce ‘phantom energy loads’ from standby functions.