As National Recycling Week (11–17 November, 2024) kicks off across Australia, Belgravia Leisure reinforces its commitment to reducing waste across its venues. Recent waste audits at key venues have revealed significant opportunities for enhanced recycling and resource recovery, with some sites having the potential to reach up to 95% recovery rates—an aspirational goal for our efforts.

Alexia Morgan, Manager, Sustainability and Environment, shares, “By following the waste hierarchy, Belgravia takes a proactive approach to waste minimisation, prioritising actions like avoiding, reducing, reusing, repairing and recycling.”

“To better understand and track waste generation, Belgravia recently conducted professional waste audits at three representative sites, including a holiday park, a large leisure centre and a golf course. The audits, conducted over a 24-hour period, highlighted areas for improvement in recycling and resource recovery, revealing that these venues collectively generated over 1,320 kg of waste,” Alexia said.

The findings offer actionable insights. With additional recycling practices in place, the leisure centre has the potential to achieve a 65% resource recovery rate, the holiday park could reach 95% and the golf course 90%. Importantly, the audits confirmed zero contamination in the paper and cardboard recycling streams at all sites, likely due to consistent recycling practices and ease of identification.

However, Alexia shares that there is still work to be done, “Contaminants were found in the comingled recycling streams at the leisure centre and golf course and each venue had improperly disposed of items harmful to the environment, including batteries, light globes and small electrical appliances. Batteries are valuable resources, with 95% of their components recyclable for new batteries or other uses. Similarly, fluorescent light globes contain mercury, a toxic element when not disposed of responsibly.

“Belgravia Leisure is committed to ongoing improvement and to supporting sustainable practices at all its venues. By embracing responsible waste management, Belgravia aims to contribute to a healthier environment for everyone. I think we can all do our bit to become better at recycling and managing resource recovery,” Alexia concluded.

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