Responsible Events, Offices and Cafes

A number of staff, students and commercial tenants show keen interest in discovering and implementing sustainable practices for their work areas. The Environmental Sustainability team provides resources and advice for these initiatives.

Sustainable Events Framework

A working group comprising volunteers across various operational and functional areas is currently developing a framework for sustainable events held at the University. This framework will include multiple approaches to manage elimination of single use plastics (SUPs), adopt a range of suitable channels to avoid food waste and develop robust methodologies to measure and reduce carbon emissions from University events.

Targets:

Achieve our first carbon neutral certified event in 2025, using 'Climate Active carbon neutral standards for events'
Develop a Western Sydney University Sustainable Events framework by 2025
Implement delivery of the sustainable events framework through staff education and distribution to various operational and function areas within the university

Avoidance of food waste

An initiative by the Future Student Engagement (opens in a new window) team was implemented to avoid food waste where food donations were coordinated through Oz Harvest (opens in a new window).

In CY2023, Academy U events were attended by 250 students and a total of 25kg of left-over or unwanted food was donated to Oz Harvest.

School Programs

Avoidance of single use plastics (SUPs)

In past years, it's been common practice to include single use plastic (SUP) water bottles at events for attendees. In 2023, our approach towards more sustainable practices was introduced with changes to our former practices. The University's decision to avoid the purchase and distribution of SUP water bottles at events demonstrated the practical application and impact of making sustainable choices.

As well as helping the planet by avoiding and reducing SUPs, the introduction of this initiative has helped promote and educate individuals about sustainable practices: attendees are encouraged to bring and use their own refillable drink bottles and utilise the University's free filtered drinking water via refilling stations located throughout our campuses.

In CY2023, it is estimated that the University avoided using 9,100 single use plastic water bottles at Future Student Engagement events.

SDGs 4, 12, 13, 17