ANZ

ANZ spends around $16m on electricity each year in Australia, and our use contributes around 172,000 tonnes of greenhouse emissions. Reducing electricity use at ANZ therefore presents both benefits to the environment and potential cost savings to ANZ.

ANZ has developed an energy-saving strategy which is focused on:

• auditing energy use in our major commercial buildings to identify areas of high energy use and opportunities for energy saving, for example in our data centres, which account for almost 40% of ANZ's total energy use
• introducing energy-saving technology to current systems including LCD computer screens for staff, automatic turn-off function for branch computers after hours and replacement of 'screensavers' with an energy efficient 'sleep mode' for 30,000 computers
• ensuring environmental sustainability is a core consideration of all new ANZ properties and refurbishments of existing buildings.

ANZ has cut its consumption of paper by around 16% between 2005 and 2007, and we are implementing further measures to continue this trend, such as:

• reducing the use of paper in marketing materials
• converting paper-based forms to online forms
• regular staff communications about how to minimise paper use and recycle paper
• increasing our electronic faxing capabilities and minimising hard copy faxes.

In addition to measuring and minimising our use of paper, we are also focused on sourcing office paper from sustainable paper stocks:

• we increased our use of recycled paper from 34% to 44% in 2006
• 95% of the plain copy paper we use in Australia is sourced from sustainably managed forests.

We have developed a waste improvement plan to assist in reducing our total waste and quantity sent to landfill. This plan includes:

• the introduction of co-mingled recycling of glass, aluminium, and plastics in all commercial offices and our metropolitan branches
• working with our suppliers to reduce the amount of packaging of goods and services we procure, for example, converting manuals for our desktop computers onto CD format
• recycling and reusing the copper and fibre cables from our data centres and all unwanted office furniture across multiple ANZ sites
• contracts with cleaning companies to audit the waste generated by 10 large commercial offices and 10 freehold branches
• Mobile Muster, a program in place across 250 ANZ branches and some corporate offices, which allows both customers and staff to deposit old mobile phones for recycling. ANZ is the only bank in Australia to provide this collection service to customers and staff.

ANZ has a water improvement plan to identify all possible activities or changes we can undertake to better manage our consumption and use of water.

We have audited a number of our commercial buildings and branches to measure water consumption. This information allows us to monitor water consumption on a regular basis and identify water saving opportunities.

As well as monitoring, we are introducing practical measures to minimise our water usage, including:

• implementing improved water facilities in new and refurbished branches
• reducing the use of water-based cooling at our data centres and moving to air-cooled systems where possible
• incorporating best practice water conservation measures in new buildings, including the use of recycled water, water-efficient cooling towers and water-saving bathroom fittings and features
• providing regular information to staff about how they can save water at work.