Environmental Initiatives and Improvements
CLASS Locksmiths has an environmental policy, and supporting procedures, which aim to protect the environment, in big ways and small ways. Its overriding objective is to enable us—as individuals and as an organisation as a whole—to minimise any adverse impacts our work could have on the environment. Our policy is regularly reviewed and our staff are trained and involved in its implementation and on new initiatives that arise. We participated in the Australian Government Small Business Climate Change Action Initiative to foster our own business innovation culture in the environmental area. Through participation we identified improvements we could make immediately, and over the long term, to become an environmentally friendly work place. Examples include:
| Description of Initiative | Estimated $ savings per year | Greenhouse Gas Emissions savings per year (kg CO2 per annum) |
| Plug in digital timers installed on Zip water boiling units in staff kitchen facilities so that units switch off at the power supply after hours and weekends. | $120 | 444 |
| Computers and key cutting machines turned off at night to conserve energy. | $120 | 444 |
| Incandescent light globes replaced with compact fluorescents (CFL) and 50W halogen lamps replaced with 35w infrared coated (IRC) lamps. | $160 | 588 |
| Applied film on the large number of glass panels in our showroom and office premises. The film insulates the glass which faces north and west and is exposed to an extreme intensity and significant hours of sunlightNew more efficient air conditioning units have also been installed to conserve energy.A routine maintenance program has been implemented to maintain energy efficiencies. | $858(actual savings) | 3300(actual savings) |
Other initiatives
| Description of Initiative | Estimated $ savings per year | Greenhouse Gas Emissions savings per year (kg per annum) |
| Four of the seven CLASS service vans have been equipped with LPG to reduce emissions. All vehicles are regularly serviced. | $6,000 | 2600 |
We utilised the ACTSmart Business Energy and Water Program to commission to analyse our electricity usage and identify possible actions to reduce our carbon footprint.The project identified that 50% of our power usage came from our extensive lighting system in our showroom, workshops, and office.We replaced our aging fluorescent lighting system with greater light emitting LED tubes and at the same time halved the energy consumption of our lighting system:
| $5,000 | 1800 |
CLASS has introduced an extensive reduce, reuse, recycle project including:
| $1,300 (first bullet point only) | 2000 |
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Limiting CLASS Locksmiths’ impact on our local communities CLASS Locksmiths have increased our focus on safety and in particular road safety. We have introduced defensive driving courses for our drivers and have introduced “hands free” mobile phone capability in all our vans to minimize road safety incidents. This is good for business as well as being good for our drivers and good for the community. We have introduced easy off street parking and automatic doors to our showroom at 51 Kembla Street Fyshwick to cater for the disabled. We have invested in plasma cutting equipment for gaining entry to safes instead of oxyacetylene to reduce the potential for dangerous explosions and improve community safety.
