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Our Sustainability Impact

In 2017, we installed a 200kW energy system powered by 479 solar panels on our rooftops. Worth over $518,000, the energy generated from these panels offsets about 30% of our energy use — that's approximately $84,000 in annual electricity spend, or 257 tonnes in yearly CO2 emissions.

In our effort towards greater sustainability, our garden curator Joseph Mann along with many hardworking residents, have created several veggie patches and produced compost.

The veggies are included in some meals in the dining hall, such as the leek for leek soup and residents are allowed to help themselves to the veggies so they can make a salad.

The green waste collected from around the College goes into the production of our compost, which is used in our veggie patch.

Waste is a current reality of our industry and we’re taking steps to eliminate, reduce, reuse or recycle where possible.

Resident-led teams enforce recycling efforts across the College, making sure that recyclable materials are sorted properly before it's sent to a Recycling Centre or Material Recovery Facility, or wherever possible, reused.

We don’t use any pesticides or herbicides. All the weeds are pulled out by hand which is not as big of a task as you would think! The benefit of this is that now we have waste we can put into our compost.

Since we’re so close to the Swan River we don’t want chemicals from our sand and soil going into the river (this also helps protect the bees, arthropods, and worms).

Spraying chemicals affects all the insects, not just the harmful ones.

The Bee Project is organised by our residents whereby they planted native species on the rooftop gardens, along with lavender to attract the Blue Banded Bees.

To add to that, we’ve planted some other plants like Kangaroo Paws, which aims to attract birds and other pollinators.