Anglican Care Dives into Sustainability

CEO Colin Osborne attests that Anglican Care is committed to becoming sustainable across a diverse range of practices. From introducing solar panels to all homes, chemical free cleaning methods, cutting food waste in half by diverting remaining food waste to local Hunter farms to be used as organic green waste to reducing water and energy usage, Anglican Care's sustainability efforts have grown from a ripple and into a tidal wave.

Anglican Care Head Chef Aaron Campbell even sources fresh seafood, meat, dairy, fruit and vegetables locally!

“This program is really being driven by our staff. You often worry about some initiatives because they have a habit of running out of momentum, but that hasn't been the case with our sustainability program. In fact, success has bred success, and the buy-in that we've had from staff has just been nothing short of incredible,” said CEO Colin Osborne.

Whilst Anglican Care is at the beginning of their sustainability journey, they are already seeing incredible results. In fact, already thousands of kilograms of food waste has been diverted from landfill across Anglican Care homes, plus the introduction of solar panels in six of their 12 homes has already seen significant reductions in energy usage.

Deb Matthews, Anglican Care’s Sustainability Champion says, “The first step in our journey towards sustainability was to understand and measure our current performance in four key areas – resource efficiency, waste reduction, supply chain integrity and people engagement.”

Deb believes a vital part of the journey so far has been the participation of the Sustainability Advantage Program. Run by the NSW Government’s Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, Deb says the program helped the organisation understand the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) and how they could apply them to what they do every day. 

“Anglican Care participated in the Love Food Hate Waste program which aimed to reduce food waste at both the preparation stage, as well as food waste left on the plate. Food wastage is a concerning environmental and social problem for large organisations throughout Australia. Participation in the Love Food Hate Waste program has already allowed for 543,000 kg of food waste to be diverted from landfill across Anglican Care facilities. It’s an incredible result!”, reported Deb.

The chemical free cleaning trial, which took place earlier this year at Toronto Nursing Home, was also a great success, and there are plans to roll out the method to all 12 homes in 2020.

Check out Anglican Care's Sustainability Matters video below: