On-air interview with Kate Brennan (CEO of Fed Square) delivered by Dr Andi on Sunday 6 April, 2008. (Click here for an mp3 audio file of the show featuring the interview.)
Article written by Michelle Kovacevic
WITH AN ESTIMATED 41 million visits since its opening in October 2002, most tourists (and Melbourne residents) know that Federation Square is one of Victoria’s main tourist attractions. What they may not be so aware of, are the extensive sustainability projects that have been implemented around the venue, making Fed Square a hub for sustainability activities and community initiatives.
“We feel we have an obligation to reflect the views and interests of the community in their public space.” says Brennan. More recently, the views and interests of the community have tended to focus on sustainability and living a “greener” lifestyle, shunning the wasteful, materialistic urges that have dominated for so long.
With this in mind, The Federation Square Environmental Management Plan (EMP) was developed in April 2006 and is based on a commitment to protecting and improving the environment, particularly in the areas of water saving, waste reduction and energy consumption. In less than 2 years under this program, Federation Square has reduced water consumption by 14% (about 12-14 million litres per year…enough to fill 35 Olympic swimming pools!) and reduced their waste and energy consumption by up to 5% and 21% respectively.
This is a company that takes the phrase “every drop counts” seriously. Making water conservation and water recycling a priority, Fed Square has introduced waterless urinals and flow restrictors to all their public toilets and have installed 11 rainwater tanks around the site, managing to fit rainwater tanks “in places where people can’t imagine that we could squeeze in tank…and using that [harvested] water for our gardens and toilets.”
One of the bigger water saving projects has been reducing the amount of water going to the sewer from the Cooling Towers by a process called reverse osmosis filtering (more information on this filtering below) resulting in a 75% reduction.
Beyond their practical implementation of environmental sustainability initiatives, Fed Square is doing a lot of work in partnering with organisiations to get across the message they want to communicate about sustainability. Among countless other examples, their ongoing partnership with City West Water to stop water wastage and their support of companies who participated in Earth Hour, highlight the need for large corporations to support each other in their sustainability projects.
So where to from here? Will sustainability targets continue to be met? “We’ve set ourselves some pretty hefty targets trying to achieve carbon neutrality across the site by 2012…so we’ve got absolutely no intention of taking our foot off the accelerator.”
As long as it’s a hybrid car, Kate.
What is reverse osmosis filtering?
Solutions (particularly water) are purified by a process that forces the water from a region of high solute concentration to low solute concentration through several semi-permeable membranes. Energy is required to apply pressure greater than the osmotic pressure in order to force the salt water to flow against its concentration gradient. This process is commonly used in desalination plants – to turn salty water into drinkable water.
For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_osmosis
Tags: fed square, federation square, sustainability, sustainable
