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Our Sustainability Impact
At St Catherine’s College, we do business in a way that makes sense for today, tomorrow, and for future generations. A passionate group of residents form part of the Environmental Committee and work with staff to achieve our ambitious targets.
What We've Achieved
Our Top 5 Sustainability Highlights
Solar Energy
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.
Grounds, Veggie Patches and Compost
In our effort towards greater sustainability, our Grounds Manager Greg Duke along with many hardworking residents, has created several veggie patches and produced compost.
Some meals in the dining hall include veggies, such as leeks for leek soup and residents are allowed to help themselves to the veggies so they can make a salad.
The green waste collected around the College is used to produce compost, which is also used in our veggie patch.
Recycling and Waste Management
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're Pesticide and Herbicide Free
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.