Staff

The first stage of the University of Tasmania’s plan to reduce the amount of its waste going to landfill was launched this week.

The initial step towards meeting this goal is the installation of a series of new recycling bins across all campuses as part of a Public Place Recycling Project.

The Public Place Recycling Project is a partnership between UTAS and the Packaging Stewardship Forum, which involves installing public place recycling stations across all UTAS campuses.

By encouraging increased resource recovery practices by student, staff and visitors the project aims to help UTAS improve its environmental performance and raise awareness of responsible environmental management within the UTAS and broader community.

UTAS has committed to increasing its sustainability by also this week signing the Talloires Declaration, which is a 10 point action plan for incorporating sustainability and environmental literacy in teaching, research, operations and outreach at universities.  It has been signed by over 350 universities in more than 40 countries.

“As part of the UTAS Sustainability Vision it is a primary aim to develop a comprehensive and integrated sustainability objective that is engaging and connects UTAS’ operational and academic interests with those of the wider community,” UTAS Vice-Chancellor Professor Le Grew said.

“UTAS is a world renowned tertiary education institution for producing graduates and undertaking research into practical and innovative solutions to the environmental sustainability challenges of society.

“The recent signing of the Talloires Declaration by UTAS further demonstrates our commitment to sustainability and provides UTAS with an opportunity to reaffirm its environmental values and in the process clarify its sustainability objectives in the context of its entire activity base.”

UTAS is also undertaking other programs to increase its sustainability, including running an Energy Reduction Challenge where individual UTAS buildings compete against each other to reduce their energy consumption.

UTAS sustainability manager Kamal Singh is collating the results on each building’s energy use for the past month to see which buildings reduced their energy consumption by the most and has plans to start a Recycling Challenge.