The Foren­sic and Ana­lyt­i­cal Sci­ence Ser­vice (FASS) Facil­i­ties Man­age­ment team has been pro­mot­ing envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty since its incep­tion, imple­ment­ing a range of ini­tia­tives, from small work­place projects through to larg­er infra­struc­ture upgrade projects across the entire FASS Lid­combe Campus.

Bet­ter waste man­age­ment was one of the team’s first areas of focus. The team reduced the many office rub­bish bins to a cen­tralised bin in the kitch­enette, reduc­ing the use of con­sum­ables. They also iden­ti­fied that a lot of gen­er­al waste was being put in clin­i­cal waste bags, which get incin­er­at­ed, so pro­vid­ed re-edu­ca­tion ses­sions for lab­o­ra­to­ry staff about which mate­ri­als were clin­i­cal waste. Reduc­ing the amount of clin­i­cal waste has envi­ron­men­tal benefits. 

The open­ing of the Foren­sic Med­i­cine & Coro­ners Court Com­plex (FMCCC) saw an influx of vehi­cles in the area, so the Facil­i­ties Man­age­ment team cre­at­ed a green trav­el plan detail­ing pub­lic trans­port options to encour­age staff mem­bers to leave their cars at home. 

The team has also under­tak­en larg­er infra­struc­ture projects to reduce FASS’ car­bon foot­print. The exter­nal light­ing at the Sci­ence Cen­tre has been upgrad­ed with ener­gy effi­cient LED lights and the hot water sys­tem has been replaced, result­ing in greater effi­cien­cy and ener­gy sustainability.

Rain­wa­ter tanks have been installed and are used to irri­gate the grounds and gar­dens, and the team is sub­mit­ting a pro­pos­al for the instal­la­tion of solar pan­els on all build­ings on the FASS Lid­combe campus.
The team has con­sis­tent­ly demon­strat­ed envi­ron­men­tal lead­er­ship with an ongo­ing com­mit­ment to gen­uine­ly mak­ing a dif­fer­ence by advo­cat­ing for change and engag­ing in projects, both small and large, to improve envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty at FASS.