Services

Coun­cil’s key envi­ron­men­tal initiatives:

Elim­i­na­tion of Sin­gle Use Plastic

Coun­cil sup­ports the elim­i­na­tion of SUPs – such as cups, straws, cut­lery, and take away food con­tain­ers – from its ser­vices, pro­grams, events and facil­i­ties, includ­ing per­mit hold­ers using Coun­cil land or facilities.

Increased tree plant­i­ng across municipality

• Coun­cil man­ages 20,000 trees across the munic­i­pal­i­ty, some have suf­fered over the recent long dry sum­mers. How­ev­er Coun­cil is work­ing towards a 2 for 1 replace­ment plan. One of the ways for doing that is work­ing with local schools to which Coun­cil has pro­vid­ed (up to) 50 trees per school (17 local schools). The trees are plant­ed by stu­dents (assist­ed by Coun­cil) on school grounds with ongo­ing upkeep by the schools.

Parks and Oval ren­o­va­tion tech­niques to reduce water

• The pur­chase of oval ren­o­va­tion equip­ment has improved the sur­face qual­i­ty of sport­ing grounds, reduced water require­ments, and increased root zone depth, lead­ing to more sus­tain­able grass growth
• Rain­bird irri­ga­tion sys­tem has improved water effi­cien­cy at Coun­cil parks, oval and sport­ing grounds. It has the abil­i­ty to instant­ly shut down when it’s rain­ing, it pro­vides evapo-tran­spi­ra­tion reports, alters water sched­ules depen­dent upon infor­ma­tion it receives from weath­er sta­tions, pro­vides flow rate data and iden­ti­fies high flow events when sub­ject to vandalism.
• Coun­cil has been work­ing through its Parks Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee, towards liais­ing with local res­i­dents of each park on what envi­ron­men­tal improve­ments could be made. For exam­ple water sav­ing through land­scap­ing, putting in bike paths etc.

Strate­gi­cal­ly placed water dis­pensers in the Mall

• Coun­cil installed a total of 9 water dis­pensers: 6 in the Todd Mall, and a fur­ther 3 strate­gi­cal­ly locat­ed around the CBD.

Cities Pow­er Partnership

• Coun­cil has pledged to reduce emis­sions com­mu­ni­ty wide
• Increase renew­able ener­gy on Council’s build­ing and pro­vide a com­mon goal for residents
• Imple­ment edu­ca­tion pro­grams regard­ing sustainability
• Pro­vide fast charg­ing infra­struc­ture through­out the town

Instal­la­tion of solar at all Coun­cil facilities

• Total of 570 kW
• 2,227 solar panels
• Aver­age year­ly reduc­tion of 52 tonnes of CO2e

LED light replace­ment across Coun­cil facilities

• At Coun­cil’s Civic Cen­tre, Depot and RWMF, all lights are grad­u­al­ly being replaced with LEDs

Region­al Waste Man­age­ment Facil­i­ty Recycling

• Glass crush­er; pro­duc­ing 37.18 tonnes annu­al­ly which are divert­ed away from landfill
• Card­board baler; bal­ing 52.95 tonnes per annum which are freight­ed to Ade­laide to be mass recy­cled and re-used
• Pro­cess­ing green waste into mulch, where 1097.72 tonnes per annum are resold and re-used in the com­mu­ni­ty and by council
• Coun­cil endorsed a ​“cash for con­tain­ers” scheme pri­or to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment intro­duc­ing the 10c deposit con­tain­er scheme to the NT

Sus­tain­able fleet

• Elec­tric Meri­da Bicy­cle and a Nis­san Leaf for staff pool trans­port, charged at Coun­cil via solar (car­bon neutral)

Alice Springs Aquat­ic & Leisure Cen­tre ener­gy efficiency

• Instal­la­tion of Vari­able Speed Dri­ves (VSDs), these enable what are oth­er­wise fixed-speed motors to oper­ate a range of speeds and torques from zero to 100%. They can give great process flex­i­bil­i­ty, reduce wear and tear on machines, and dra­mat­i­cal­ly cut ener­gy usage
• Pool blan­ket for indoor pool to retain heat
• Pool lights: a review of the light­ing lev­els inside Alice Springs Aquat­ic & Leisure Cen­tre main indoor pool facil­i­ty was con­duct­ed, reveal­ing high ener­gy usage. Coun­cil secured a NT Gov­ern­ment grant to replace 55 exist­ing met­al halide flood­lights with ener­gy effi­cient LEDs. This will reduce ener­gy usage by approx­i­mate­ly 26,000kg C02‑e Green­house Gas emis­sions, sav­ing approx­i­mate­ly $11,000 per annum.