'Mini forest' saved with one tweak to this company's system | Region Canberra
A Canberra company’s simple change slashed its paper usage, reducing its reliance on a product that contributes heavily to global deforestation. Photo: onurdongel. The salvation of a “mini forest” lay in a. . .
A Canberra company’s simple change slashed its paper usage, reducing its reliance on a product that contributes heavily to global deforestation. Photo: onurdongel. The salvation of a “mini forest” lay in a single moment of curiosity and a fiendishly simple systems tweak – one that allowed a prominent Canberra property firm to slash its commercial paper usage by more than 90 per cent. It started when Civium CEO Kylie Dennis noticed how frequently pallets of paper were being wheeled into the basement car park for the company’s commercial printer, prompting a simple question: “Is this something we need to look into?”Civium COO Gareth Halverson knew paper consumption was high, but actually crunching the numbers was a wake-up call. “With the frequency of delivery of paper, we ascertained that we’d sent about 10 million sheets of paper since 2020 out to our clients nationally,” he said. “Using some fast and rough calculations, that’s equivalent to about 1250 trees. When you think of it in that context, it makes it very real. It’s something that you can visualise. “It’s a mini forest. ”Heavy paper reliance is an industry standard in strata management, where a single Annual General Meeting (AGM) packet can easily span 200 pages. Multiplied across hundreds of property owners, the environmental toll mounts rapidly. In the ACT, residents can choose how they receive their AGM packets and levy statements. For various reasons, some clients still require traditional hard copies. However, Civium suspected that the sheer volume of people sticking to paper was less about preference and more about a flaw in their own systems. Fixing it became low-hanging fruit for the company’s sustainability mission. Before the overhaul, the vast majority of Civium’s clients had already voluntarily made the digital switch, leaving just 28 per cent opting for paper. “But the way the system was set up, people had to actively opt in for digital communications,” Gareth said. “That remaining 28 per cent was still generating a massive mountain of paper leaving our office every day. We saw it as a huge opportunity to make a real impact. ”Civium COO Gareth Halverson says Project Green will roll out across all Civium branches along the eastern seaboard. Photo: Civium. The solution was “Project Green”. The team flipped the default setting on its head: clients were given a notice period to actively opt in to paper. If they did nothing, they transitioned to digital. When the notice period lapsed, the results were staggering: the number of clients opting for paper plummeted from 28 per cent to just 2. 5 per cent. “Unsurprisingly, our ACT clients were incredibly supportive,” Gareth said. “It wasn’t an unprecedented move. We’ve seen other industries do the same thing over the years. But it’s a meaningful step. ”Following the success of the ACT pilot, Civium rolled Project Green out in NSW and Victoria to equally receptive audiences, with plans to expand the initiative to Queensland. Project Green is part of Civium’s broader Environmental, Social and Governance framework – the metrics the company uses to measure and disclose its ethical and operational impact. Alongside the paper reduction, Civium has installed solar panels on its roof. Gareth noted that, like many eco-friendly shifts, the benefits have rippled far beyond just carbon reduction. “It was an educational process for us to run the cost analysis and see the tangible benefits to tenants,” he said. “Ultimately, that helps inform the side of our business that manages commercial properties. “It proves that environmental changes don’t have to be a zero-sum game – they can have broad benefits for communities and businesses. ”Region Media Partner Content