Sustainability For Staff

Swinburne offers a number of courses in sustainability at both the Higher Education and TAFE level. Our courses will provide students with skills and qualifications they need to find a job in their chosen field. Course listings covering sustainability can be found on our sustainability courses site

Swinburne has developed a detailed sustainability strategy to inform our future direction. The strategy outlines Swinburne’s goals around the following key areas:

• Culture and Stewardship
• Teaching and Learning
• Research
• People Development
• Social and Community Sustainability
• Business and Environmental Sustainability

Swinburne is a signatory to the Talloires Declaration which signifies our commitment to promoting and maintaining global sustainability through the activities of the university. Read more

Swinburne’s Green Office program is a simple way for Swinburne staff to reduce their spending on resource use and reduce their impact on the environment – all at once! The Green Office program provides you with the support and resources to make real results possible.

See the professional development section of the Green Your Course website.

Leave the car at home and catch up on your study on the train, tram or bus.  Select your campus below to find out about your public transport options to travel to Swinburne. 

• Croydon  
• Healesville
• Hawthorn
• Lilydale
• Prahran
• Wantirna

All of Swinburne campuses have bicycle parking facilities installed on-site.  Some campuses even feature bike lockers to keep your bike extra safe and out of the elements.  If you haven’t located your local campus bike parking or shower facilities yet, then ask your campus SSAA representative to point you in the right direction. 

All of Swinburne campuses have commingled recycling bins.  You can easily identify these bins by their red colour.

• Plastic & glass bottles
• Aluminium & steel cans
• Paper and light cardboard (eg. coffee cups)
• Tetra milk and juice packs

What can not be placed in these bins?

• A list of items will be added shortly

Some of Swinburne’s passionate Green Office staff have set up other recycling faculties on campus, so keep a look out for battery & mobile phone recycling bins.

Light paper and cardboard can be placed in the red commingled recycling bins. Cardboard boxes should be flattened and taken to your campuses local drop off points. These points are located next to paper recycling bins inside Swinburne buildings. You should let a member of the administration staff know that you have left cardboard at the bin. The staff member will then arrange for the cardboard to be collected.

Standard office paper should be recycled at your local campus paper recycling stations. These may be located in the library or around the printers at computer labs

There is no official food waste collection service operating at all campuses yet. Green waste composting / collection services operate at Prahran and Lilydale campuses.  You can ask staff there where the facilities are and how to use them.

If you want to be green, why not take your food waste home with you and compost it there.  Don’t have space for a compost bin? Don’t worry, you can use a Bokashi composting bin indoors and give away the garden friendly end result to your neighbours.

Your final option is to place your food waste in the general waste bins.

You’ll find many For Sale and Wanted notices posted up on notice boards around our campuses.  All notices need to be approved by the Swinburne Student Association.  You can also list and search for items on the online Swinburne Trading Post.
Some other off-campus free or used goods trading services are listed below

• Freecycle Melbourne
• Local Freecycle groups
• GumTree
• Trading Post
• eBay

The National Centre for Sustainability has a Friends group that staff are welcome to join.  There is currently no formal Swinburne community of practice framed around sustainability at Swinburne, however don’t let that stop you from starting one.  You may event be interested in joining the Swinburne Students Sustainability Facebook page.

All these topics and more are covered under the following sections.

• Equity and diversity
  
• Employee assistance program
  
• A safe work environment – OH&S

Visit the library sustainability starter guide to begin your sustainability research.

If you can’t find the answer to your sustainability question on our website or search page, then please contact us directly or ask your local Green Office representative.