Sustainability
The Department takes the issue of sustainability seriously and has over the last few years tried to reduce its impact on the natural environment and continues to take new initiatives to continue this process. The following is a list of areas where improvements have been made, with the majority being in the area of IT.
IT
- Purchase of higher quality computers with an increased warranty period from 3 years to 4 years (servers 5yrs), resulting in reduced failures, turnover rates and waste. In fact some machines in the Department are still providing useful service after 5 or 6 years.
- The minimal number of servers required for the required tasks, whilst also balancing the need for redundancy and backup systems.
- The combination of server applications and services where feasible.
- Re-use of older but still functional computers to lesser tasks.
- Recycling of IT equipment through reputable recyclers, who either reuse parts or recycle the raw materials, with the safe disposal of toxic substances such as the phosphor coating contained with CRTs.
- Replacement of CRT monitors with lower power consumption LCDs.
- Purchase of energy efficient equipment.
- Configuration of workstations to power down monitors after 30 minutes and to enter standby mode after 1 hour of inactivity.
- Staff are requested to shutdown their computers at the end of the day.
- Phasing out of small personal printers with small toner capacities and low usage, in favour or shared network printers.
- Purchase of networked, duplex (double-sided printing) laser printers, with a low power interim standby mode and sleep mode after 30 minutes.
- Staff are encouraged to preview documents before printing to ascertain the number of pages required
- The use of PDF creation applications for the simple and effective capture of web pages and other displayed documents, instead of printing.
- Configuration of photocopiers with automatic weekday power-up and power-down times (8am - 7pm) and the ability to enter sleep mode after 2 hours of inactivity.
- Purchase of photocopiers with the capability to scan documents to PDF format for emailing or storage on fileservers, thus reducing the use of paper and the storage of paper documents. This feature also reduces the need to fax documents, since many can be scanned and emailed instead.
- Use of video conferencing between campuses.
General
- Paper recycling.
- Turning off office lights at the end of the day.
- Use of a combination of public transport and taxis between offices where possible.
- Refurbishment of existing buildings.
- Minimisation of interstate and overseas travel.
It is acknowledged that the Department still has some way to go to reducing its so called 'consumption'. This is particularly so in the area of heating and cooling of old drafty, un-insulated buildings. This problem is hampered by the fact that many of the buildings the Department uses are not owned by it or the University.