Platinum Club Membership Application Now Open!

Applications are currently being accepted for entry into the esteemed Grow Me The Money Platinum Club! If you are a current Grow Me the Money Participant and consider yourself to be a ‘Business Sustainability Leader’ then take a look at our Platinum Club application page here and apply.

Forum Success Story – Congratulations STRATEGEM!

Strategem Financial Group posted a question on the Forum this month about lighting in their office and how to calculate their savings. A big thank you to SustainableIT and Long Life Lighting for their helpful answers. Strategem have an estimated reduction in lighting electricity consumption of 5049kWh pa – that’s a saving of $808 pa simply by adjusting their lighting appropriately! Congratulations on your savings! To post a question yourself visit this link.

A Minute with A Mentor

Welcome to the first of our regular Mentor Minutes, where you get to meet a Grow Me The Money Mentor. If you are a Participant and you think your business could benefit from a Mentoring session with Raymond or any of our Mentor please call the Helpdesk.

Raymond and Sam from Long Life Lighting

Name: Raymond Milidoni

Business: Long Life Lighting

Position: Director

How long have you been involved in business sustainability?
Sustainability is a topic that has concerned me for over 2 years; the previous business I owned and operated had no major focus with helping the environment so a change was desired. After many months of research I found that there was a large need for a sustainable lighting source for the future. Long Life Lighting has been operating for over 9 months to this date and we have made huge growth in business sustainability. We have many case studies being completed at the moment all with excellent results and a rewarding feeling as a business owner.

What do you consider your sustainability specialty?
Lighting and energy consumption is what it is mainly focused on; however we have moderate knowledge in other sustainability sectors so we can give advice on most topics. We are also affiliated with many sustainability coaching companies which are happy to assist our clients.

Why do you think businesses should work towards greater sustainability?
Business should work towards greater sustainability because it is simply too easy. There has never been so much support, products and ideas to shift towards a sustainable business. All sustainable solutions have an excellent payback period and the return on the investment is ongoing.

What’s your top sustainability tip?
No sustainable change or idea is too small to abandon.
Far too often I hear people say that they “don’t care” as the saving or reduction in carbon emissions is too little. Think about the matter logically, what if every home and business was to make that identical small change, wouldn’t it be a large saving and an enormous decrease in carbon emissions?

Healesville Regional Waste Management Conference

On August 9th, Erin Simpson presented information about GMTM at the Regional Waste Management conference in Marysville. The Regional Education Officers in attendance learned about how GMTM works and what the program could offer businesses in their area. The REOs had many questions about how the program might affect the work they currently do, and it was very useful to get their input and perspectives on how GMTM could interact with other programs. For example, GMTM accepts action plans that have been created for other programs, such as Waste Wise. The Grow Me The Money team understands that small businesses often don’t have the time and resources to dedicate to multiple programs, and we certainly don’t want participants to reinvent the wheel! It was also very beneficial to gain local insight on the resources that businesses need to be successful in reducing their resource consumption. Grow Me The Money is hopeful that some productive partnerships will emerge as a result of this learning experience!

Regional Roadshow

The regional roadshow has been and gone. Running from July 24 to September 26, the roadshow allowed us to spread the word to businesses, lay the foundations for good relationships with stakeholders and also meet many of the participants and mentors that have signed up to the program since April.

A big thank you to everyone involved in the roadshow and to you for attending! In many respects the roadshow signalled the beginning of the roll out to all regions and we'll now be capitalising on the foundations made to continually strengthen our presence across all of Victoria.

Ben Norden, Regional Manager GMTM

Kilvington Girls Grammar

The last month has seen a young, new and enthusiastic addition to the Grow Me The Money program. Fifty students from Kilvington Girls Grammar have commenced working on a new project which involves the girls in business sustainability issues within the CBD. The students, in groups of five, will be placed at a Grow Me The Money business in the coming weeks to complete a research project which will contribute to their final grade.

A part of each project is to complete the business’ Workplace Assessments. The students are then required to focus on electricity or water and provide informative and realistic suggestions for improving either. These suggestions will be presented in a report and be valuable information for the business to develop an Action Plan.

Students visited their businesses on a Friday morning to meet their supervisors and find out information about what they will be focusing on. Later that afternoon Grow Me The Money held a training session for the students at the VECCI building in East Melbourne. Business sustainability was introduced in more detail and the students learnt how to do Workplace Assessments. Each group was fantastic at presenting the information they gathered earlier that day and Grow Me The Money staff are now able to develop appropriate tools the students can use when they are at the business.

Students and teachers at Kilvington Girls Grammar have so far been full of enthusiasm and will no doubt be a valuable resource to their businesses in the coming month!

Melbourne Roadshow Event

As many of our mailing list subscribers will be aware, the Grow Me The Money team has been travelling throughout Victoria since July, hosting informational meetings as part of our Regional Roadshow. Due to the overwhelmingly positive feedback GMTM has received from these events, the team added Melbourne to its travel diary. On Wednesday, 26th of September, over 40 interested businesses gathered at VECCI headquarters to hear about the GMTM program. Not only did they learn how GMTM can help businesses reduce resource consumption and improve their environmental impact, they also learned about some exciting new program additions, such as the GMTM Forum and our new green procurement program, which is still in development.

After presentations from GMTM, EPA Victoria, CityWest Water, and Better Living Products, the audience shared drinks and canapés whilst networking with each other and meeting the Grow Me The Money team. Keep an eye out for information about our next event, or register with the program for your own luncheon or workshop invitation!

Recycle your computers for free with the Byteback program!

On the 7th September, the Byteback computer equipment recycling program officially opened a new recycling centre in Geelong! Take along your old computing equipment and they’ll recycle it, which will prevent it from going to landfill and leeching all the poisonous plastics and metals into the earth and our water supplies. The program is free to all residents and small businesses and Grow Me The Money would particularly like to encourage you to take advantage of the service as it is currently a trial program and supporting it will help them to achieve their goal of a comprehensive nation-wide computer recycling scheme.

The address is: City of Geelong Resource Recovery Centre and Transfer Station, 100 Douro Street, North Geelong. Don’t forget that they have another centre in Camberwell!

And you can find out more about the program and what you can recycle by visiting the stylish new Byteback website here: http://www.bytebackaustralia.com.au/

Smart Water Fund

Creating a Water Smart Future
Round 5 of the Smart Water Fund will be open for applications until 9 November 2007 with funding available to local government, business, community groups and individuals for their innovative sustainable water and biosolids use projects.

There are two funding streams available to applicants under Round 5:
• Up to $3 million for Victoria-wide urban community and business innovations;
• Up to $2 million for research and development into some of the key challenges facing the water industry. Targeted project descriptions that address these challenges are available on the Smart Water Fund website.

South East Water Managing Director and Smart Water Fund spokesperson Dennis Cavagna encourages anyone with innovative water or biosolids use to apply for funding, stating “The Smart Water Fund has invested almost $20 million in over 120 projects since its inception…anyone with an innovative project to add to this knowledge bank is urged to apply for Smart Water Fund investment.”

For more information or to obtain an application pack visit www.smartwater.com.au or call 1800 882 432.