Sustainability at Flinders

Bright Ideas,
Brighter Future

Our Sustainability Plan sets out our vision and our commitment to 2025.

It’s been driven by the bold ideas harnessed from our Flinders community and each year we will set out our priority actions, report on progress, showcase our impact and celebrate our achievements.

Find out more about our sustainability journey and how you can get involved.

Our Sustainability Report

Our 2019-20 Action Plan

Flinders University is powering its SA campuses and facilities with 100% green renewable energy, achieving net-zero emissions from electricity.

Flinders’ five-year deal with ENGIE guarantees the supply of electricity from one of the state’s largest renewable energy projects, the Willogoleche Wind Farm in South Australia’s mid-north. The supply complements our existing investments in solar carpark and rooftop systems that are already generating 20% of electricity needs at our main campus. Our investment in a range of renewable supply and storage projects has Flinders making rapid progress to become one of Australia’s first carbon-positive universities.

Learn more

Driving sustainability - electric vehicles

Flinders has installed 13 electric vehicle chargers at Bedford Park in car parks 6, 9 and 14. With 13 fully electric vehicles already on site, we’re well on the road to achieving our vision to decarbonise our transport fleet.

Students, staff and visitors can use the chargers with a valid parking session. Electric vehicle owners should consult their manuals for their specific charging needs. The chargers are equipped with fixed cables or you can bring your own cable stations (and adaptors if required).

Please make sure you have a valid parking session and observe the time limits:

Car park 6 – 2 hours
Car park 9 – 4 hours
Car park 14 – 4 hours

Resource Recovery

Our vision is to recover the maximum possible utility and value from materials consumed on campus. We’ll embrace this circular economy and demonstrate how new ways of treating waste can be rolled out.

Bin it!

It’s easy to use our bins – they’re colour coded and include images of the objects you can place in each one.

Green bin

This bin can be used for most items originally made from plants. This includes anything compostable (food and drink containers, straws), any food scraps, tea bags, tissues and paper towels.

Yellow bin

Look out for the yellow bins to dispose of your recyclables. It’s a yes for glass bottles, metal cans, plastics and cardboards.

Red bin

For other waste, use the red bin. Most importantly, if you’re uncertain use this bin and help to save the organics and recycling streams from contamination. Use this bin for soft plastics, wrappers and non-recyclables.

Key themes

Education

Make a difference in our world as respectful and ethical global citizens

Resource recovery

Create a circular economy for waste on our campuses

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Energy & emissions

Go beyond carbon neutral

Research

Improve lives and enhance society as a whole

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Buildings & landscapes

Create places and spaces that support smart new ways of living, learning and working

Water

Treat every drop a a precious resource

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Social & community

Apply our knowledge and expertise to deliver practical and economic benefits for social good

Food

Transform our campuses into urban farms

Transport

Create a safe, healthy and sustainable transport network

Our sustainable buildings

Flinders’ new buildings incorporate the latest in environmentally sustainable design. Flinders at Tonsley and our Student Hub at Bedford Park are outstanding examples of energy efficient buildings, and we are continually upgrading our older buildings to improve efficiencies. We believe all our facilities can become efficient spaces to inspire environmental collaboration and innovation – the sky’s the limit.

Renewable energy

Our main sources of emissions include electricity and gas used for lighting and building air-conditioning and fuel used to transport staff and students via airplane, bus and car. Flinders is shining a light on our energy consumption and working to generate clean, renewable energy through on-site solar.

We now have 7647 solar panels installed at Bedford Park and Sturt, with a system size of 2.2MW and generate over 20% of our campus electricity needs from clean, renewable energy.

In 2020, we installed 4 solar canopies on campus. These canopies are designed to provide device recharging and shelter from the elements. Located in car parks 1, 2 and north of the footbridge, these innovative stand-alone systems draw their energy from dual sided solar panels that form the roof structure and charge built in batteries stored in the seating.

The canopies are a great example of Living Labs – providing a practical demonstration of how solar energy and storage can be integrated into real world learning opportunities for students and staff.

Community gardens

Community gardens are an important part of Sustainability at Flinders. The Community Permaculture Garden at Sturt plays an important role in fostering student leadership, knowledge and learning around sustainability, environmental awareness and practical organic gardening skills on campus and is the longest running university community garden in Australia.

Grow, Eat, Learn is an initiative of Flinders University students to design a series of community market gardens inspired by the “food is free” movement. The first market garden is currently being planted alongside McHughs on South Ridge.

We’ve listened and we love your bold ideas.

The top 10 insights from your feedback and the key themes they address:

Provide more information on how the university community can make sustainable choices (Education; Social & Community)
Provide a forum for passionate sustainability advocates to have a say (Social & Community)
Find a better way to reduce, reuse or recycle more materials on our campuses (Education; Research; Social & Community; Resources Recovery)
Support the university community to engage in campus sustainability issues through funding and other support (Education; Research; Social & Community)
Eliminate single use plastics used for food and beverages (Food; Social & Community; Resources Recovery)
Keep investing in renewable energy generation on campus (Education; Research; Building & Landscapes; Energy & Emissions; Transport)
Increase the community gardens on our campuses and grow more edible species (Education; Research; Social & Community; Building & Landscapes; Food)
Enhance the Lake and turn it into a sustainability demonstration site (Education; Research; Social & Community; Building & Landscapes; Water)
Continue to capitalise on efficiency opportunities in energy and water management (Education; Research; Social & Community; Building & Landscapes; Energy & Emissions; Water)
Improve public transport options and support diversity in getting to, from and around campus (Social & Community; Energy & Emissions; Transport)