From goals to greatness: CitySwitch champions revealed

From balcony worm farms, to freight changes and building upgrades, Sydney businesses are upping their climate action and learning that doing good feels good.

In collaboration with other councils, we run the CitySwitch program to help offices reduce their environmental impact.

Each year, we recognise businesses who run projects to improve their sustainability and employee know-how.

This year's champions include:

Barry Nilsson
Barry Nilsson has an in-house sustainability committee which meets bi-monthly to identify opportunities and provide direction for improving the firm’s environmental performance. Key focus areas include reducing energy use, sustainable procurement and waste. The firm ran several employee education programs, participated in national recycling week, and ran an employee commuting survey to estimate scope 3 emissions.

Boston Scientific
Boston Scientific ANZ identified freight as its emissions hotspot. It's now transitioned tons of products from air to sea freight, which slashed its emissions. The company is also working with its customers to consolidate orders.

People think sustainability is expensive. But in our experience, we’ve found we save money. And our staff are really engaged. They like it.
- Harry Chiam, Boston Scientific

BWD Strategic
BWD Strategic introduced a new sustainable travel policy. To launch the policy, it ran a 2-week steps challenge across Australia, USA, New Zealand and other remote locations, encouraging employees to swap short car trips for walking and aim for 10,000 steps per day.

EML
EML used its lease renewal period to negotiate replacing 1,443 fluorescent fixtures with organic response LEDs. This cut energy use by 30%. The company also buys 100% renewable energy for its George Street office.

While there have been, and will continue to be, significant cost savings in both maintenance and running costs for the lighting, the most impactful benefits have been in the improved work environment for our staff and the reduced energy use.”
- Roger Stamford, EML

Focus Group
Small business Focus Group installed a worm farm on their office balcony. This diverts an estimated 130kg of food scraps from landfill a year. The methane emissions
this avoids is roughly equal to the emissions of a 300km trip in a petrol-run car. Focus Group also buys 100% GreenPower.

HDR
HDR created an office-wide culture that focusses on reducing energy use in a fun way. Simple things like introducing a shared pool of reusable bags, team outings to clean local parks, and Walk to Work Days has increased employee engagement and commitment.

INNOCEAN
When moving office, Innocean reused as much office furniture as possible and bought second hand where it could. The company undertook an employee survey to understand employee waste habits and repeated this survey to gauge progress. Based on its operational use of the building, Innocean set up 5 separate waste streams, including food scraps. It also educated its cleaning company on its goal to be carbon neutral and purchases sustainable products where possible.

Knight Frank
Among other waste initiatives, Knight Frank, in collaboration with a café in its building, introduced the stainless-steel Cercle cups program. Cercle collects, washes and returns the cups to the café for reuse.

Optiver
Optiver focused on reducing waste. It introduced the BRAD (Banish Recycling and Disposal) bin - giving employees an easy way to dispose of items like soft plastics, coffee pods and make-up packaging. It also shared office waste data with employees, who were surprised by the amount going to landfill and motivated to do better. To reduce food waste, the team opted for an incentive-based approach: if employees kept food waste below a set level for a quarter, they got to vote on what catering items went on the menu for a week.

Pangolin Associates
As much as possible, Pangolin procures materials, supplies, and services from providers with environmental and ethical credentials. It's exploring a sustainable procurement policy and the potential to purchase refurbished IT equipment to reduce the demand for brand new machinery.

Plus Architecture
After switching to 100% GreenPower, Plus Architecture conducted an energy audit to identify high-use appliances. The company got its employees onboard and changed behaviour patterns to reduce energy waste.

Surface Design
Surface Design switched to buying 100% Greenpower renewable electricity. This is still one of the most impactful things a business or individual can do to reduce environmental impact.

CitySwitch is now taking new members. Join this group of business leaders and learn what your office can do to make a genuine impact. Feel free to contact program manager Emily Keegan for a chat ekeegan@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au