Adelaide eNewsletter November 2017

SA CitySwitch Green Office Awards

Adelaide Town Hall, Friday 17 November – RSVP today

As part of the Annual Reporting Process, signatories have the opportunity to put forward an award entry under four categories; Signatory of the Year (for both tenancies under and over 2000m2), Partner of the Year, and New Signatory of the Year. State winners are then automatically entered into the National CitySwitch Awards.

We extend our thanks to Torie Brown (Property Council SA), Matthew Curnow (Pangolin Associates), and Quentin Roberts (EfficientSee) who judged the CitySwitch award entries.

This year, the CitySwitch Awards will be presented, together with the inaugural Carbon Neutral Adelaide Awards, at Adelaide Town Hall on Friday 17th of November. Due to the capacity of the space, an invitation to the Awards has been sent to two representatives of each CitySwitch Signatory organisation. If you have misplaced your invitation, or are yet to decide who your representatives will be, please see further information here.

Please join us at the Adelaide Town Hall this Friday 17th November 2017.

CitySwitch Annual Progress Reporting

Thankyou for your feedback

Thankyou to all of the SA signatories who completed the CitySwitch Annual Progress Report. This process provides us with valuable feedback, and it is a great platform for signatories to engage in forward thinking as to where they want to go next.

It is pleasing to see that there has been an increase in tenancies participating in the CitySwitch program, growth in the number of businesses undertaking indicative NABERS ratings for their offices, and strong use of CitySwitch resources. Most popular resources were the Waste Tool, Coffee Cup Toolkit, and the complementary Activation Visits that we offered earlier this year.

A number of businesses have also used the opportunity of lease renewal to relocate into higher performing office spaces this year, and we are looking forward to hearing more about the improvements that have been achieved in doing this.

Highly beneficial

CitySwitch Activation Visits

Between April and June this year, fifteen organisations took up the opportunity for a complementary CitySwitch Activation visit from Suzanne Ridding of Sustainable Business Consultants. It was great to see involvement from a diverse range of organisations, all with very different needs and at different stages of their journey. Some organisations were supported in achieving an indicative NABERS energy tenancy rating enabling them to benchmark their performance.

The organisations involved were Wallmans Lawyers, University of Adelaide, Uniting Communities, Statewide Super, SA Tourism Commission, Nunkuwarrin Yunti, Local Government Association of SA, Knight Frank, JLL, InfraPlan, City of Unley, City of Adelaide, Brookfield GIS, ATO, and AECOM. Feedback from participants was that the visits were highly beneficial.

CitySwitch Waste Assessment Tool

Waste Audit Offer

This year, we engaged the services of waste management consultancy Rawtec to support interested CitySwitch signatories in improving their waste management practices. The action involved undertaking a waste audit using the CitySwitch Waste Assessment Tool complemneted by expert advice from Rawtec.

The organisations undertook a five-day audit of their office waste and recorded the data along with some basic information about their office space and staff numbers. The data was then input into CitySwitch’s proprietary waste tool to produce an excellent report, benchmarking the business’ current waste generation and providing them with targeted recommendations for improvement.

Coffee cup toolkit

Choose | Reuse

Launching concurrently with ABC’s successful ‘War on Waste’ TV series, the CitySwitch Coffee Cup Toolkit came along with perfect timing.

The well-researched toolkit includes practical resources as well as a template to easily implement a successful reusable cup campaign in your office. Reach out if you would like collateral such as posters, cups, or coasters to support your campaign.

NABERS Energy Tenancy Ratings

91 KWS in National Pilot – NABERS Combined

With a view to drastically reducing the cost of a NABERS energy rating for tenancies and expanding the availability for office tenants to have access to benchmarked accredited tenancy energy performance, CitySwitch signatory Knight Frank and the tenants of the 30-storey office tower at 91 King William Street, Adelaide have been participating in a national pilot. 

The trial involves the calculation of accredited NABERS energy tenancy ratings for all interested tenancies within a building, calculated at the same time as an accredited NABERS whole of building energy rating is undertaken.

Once finalised, it is expected that the new NABERS Combined rating will streamline whole of building ratings and provide tenants greater visibility of their energy use and carbon emissions.

A big thank you to David Low and the team at Knight Frank for facilitating this important NABERS pilot in the City of Adelaide.

End of Year Event

Breakfast at The Depot

To round out the year, an opportunity for CitySwitch signatories, and those who may be interested in finding out more about CitySwitch to network, share achievements and provide input to our program for next year.

If you are available, it would fantastic to see a strong turnout. Fair trade coffee and tasty bites will be available for purchase at the Depot Café, 111 Franklin Street (just across from the new electric vehicle charging hub) from 7:45am on Wednesday 6th December.

No RSVP required. Please put it in your diary.