CBRE Group Origin Building
LOCATION 321 Exhibition Street, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
INSTALL DATE September 2019
INDUSTRY Commercial
Background
CBRE Group is an American commercial real estate services and investment firm. The largest commercial real estate services company in the world, operating its business through five segments including Americas, Europe, Middle East & Africa, Asia Pacific, CBRE provides services to both occupiers of and investors in real estate.
321 Exhibition is a 20 level commercial building in CBD Melbourne referred to as Origin Building with 17 floors leased to Origin Energy, three floors to telemarketing companies and a ground level food court. In addition to the food retail outlets, each floor has its own kitchen with full facilities.
Adhering to their sustainable goals, both CBRE and Origin Energy sought to implement a process and system that would help them achieve their environmental objectives. Heavily involved in the NABERS rating system, the Waste component became part of a building/sites’ measurement with CBRE aiming to make a positive improvement to this score to add to their already impressive standing.
The Green Solution
WasteMaster was chosen as a game changer for Origin, to both maintain their current 6 star NABERS energy ratings and improve their NABERS waste ratings. NABERS, or the National Australian Built Environment Rating System, is a national rating system that measures the environmental performance of Australian buildings, tenancies and homes.
Put simply, NABERS measures the energy efficiency, water usage, waste management and indoor environment quality of a building or tenancy and its impact on the environment. The rating system is becoming increasingly important for businesses to achieve and maintain as environmental hardship becomes more evident and front of mind for the public. Even more so with the then-current COVID climate whereby buildings struggled to maintain their current leases with companies opting to operate with more personnel working from home.
The WasteMaster system presented a holistic approach to the building’s specific requirements for the handling of their food waste, highlighting how CBRE could reduce the overall costs of waste collection and also dramatically improve the sustainability footprint of the building.
Positive Outcomes
Diversion of 5 tonne of food waste from landfill since installation.
Organic waste is converted on site at a low power requirement, diverting this waste from landfill, preventing associated greenhouse gas emissions, and reducing CO2 emissions from transport.
Environmental and Operational Benefits
Decreased truck movements within the city from picking up the waste on a daily basis to collecting the WasteMaster residual on just a two or three week basis.
No additives, microbes or water are required for the conversion process.
Residue from the conversion retains the organic waste’s calorific value making it ideal to produce green energy and other resources.
Local, responsive support provided by an Australian company, including remote management and monthly reporting.
“Whilst energy, water and indoor environment have been a focus it was time to put waste on the agenda make a strong commitment to reduce the buildings carbon footprint and what was going to landfill. Our tenant is an Energy company and having the ability to take our organic residue to a waste 2 energy facility was a great news story for our tenant, Globe assisted us to source this technology.”
Bruce Neish, CBRE Associate Director