What does CBM do in Australia to limit our impact?
Stories | August 30, 2019
CBM is committed to understanding where greenhouse gas emissions arise from our operations in our head office in Australia. This means we can raise awareness amongst staff about our carbon footprint and help the organisation investigate opportunities to reduce these emissions going forward.
To date CBM has invested in energy and carbon audits to understand and improve our environmental sustainability. The most recent energy audit found that our office in Melbourne is relatively greenhouse gas efficient. This is due to a range of measures including our use of natural gas and solar panels to reduce our energy requirements. CBM has also replaced the system which controls the air-conditioning, enabling smarter utilisation of energy, and installed LED lights throughout the building. CBM has seen an immediate reduction in energy consumption due to these changes.
Julie, Senior Advisor on Program Quality says that, “seeing action taken on environmental sustainability in the office makes me feel good. It lets me see that CBM is serious about being a good, global citizen here and overseas”.
The carbon audit, which was the first time that CBM has conducted an assessment of our emissions, covered our use of natural gas, electricity, accommodation, air travel, supply chain, staff commutes, waste and water usage. The audit even factored in the commute of staff to and from the workplace. The report found that air travel and electricity contributed to the majority (71%) of our carbon emissions; primarily a reflection of the international travel required to fulfil our work. CBM is addressing this by having more meetings online, reducing the need to travel and when we do travel ensuring that we fully utilise the time away.
Aaron, Head of Business Performance, noted that ‘It is really pleasing to see that there are measures we can, and have, taken that help us reduce our environment footprint, that also saves costs. Efficiency in both emissions and expense is a brilliant outcome’.
CBM takes environmental sustainability seriously. We’ve committed to a variety of behaviours to reduce our impact as individuals and as an organisation. From using ethically sourced and recycled paper products, recycled water in the bathrooms and staff composting the coffee grounds there are many small aspects of our operating that help to limit our impact on climate change.
CBM intends to continue this focus on reducing its environmental footprint by undertake regular audits to ensure that new initiatives recommended and implemented wherever possible.
Read more about our climate change work.
https://www.cbm.org.au/stories/what-does-cbm-do-climate-change
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