Revolutionising nursery industry green practice
Queensland landscape supply business Nursery Traders Pty Ltd has put sustainable nursery industry practice on the map by winning recognition as a finalist in the 2010 Premier’s ClimateSmart Sustainability Awards.
Nursery Traders’ finalist award in the Industrial Eco-efficiency ClimateSmart category honours the business’s 18-year commitment to achieving total water self-sufficiency.
Its precisely planned water harvesting, filtering and recycling systems today allow the nursery to achieve 95 per cent recycled water use. In 2000, the business used 33,097, kilolitres of potable water per hectare to irrigate the nursery. In 2009, it used only 1,232 kilolitres.
The award also recognises the business’s parallel gains in power self-sufficiency—achieved by installing what is currently the largest privately owned solar power generation system in Queensland.
Nursery Traders’ 228 solar photovoltaic panels generate 76 megawatt-hours per annum, realising power savings equivalent to removing the carbon footprint of 5.77 households each year.
Managing Director Tim Bunker says both their water recycling infrastructure and their solar power generation systems showcase nursery industry best practice.
"When we built our current Nursery Traders Pty Ltd premises in 1992, we incorporated infrastructure for a water recycling system—and from those first steps we have walked the talk of our commitment to continuous improvement," says Tim.
"We capture and reuse water from across the whole property, and use our on-site weather station to monitor conditions and automatically adjust our nursery irrigation cycle."
Proving that industry doesn’t need to trade profit for green practice, Nursery Traders’ water recycling investment of time, energy and capital has yielded savings of more than 40,000,000 litres per annum since 2000.
The business recorded its greatest savings in August and September 2008, when it used only 11 litres of potable water to irrigate its entire nursery of more than 12 000m . Meanwhile, the nursery’s solar power system today generates approximately 208 kilowatt-hours every day—transforming radiated energy from the sun into electrical energy without generating pollution, providing a daily reduction in CO2-e of 217.568 kg (79,412 kg annually).
"We believe our system is an Australian benchmark installation of both Kyocera solar panels and Aurora inverters," says Tim.
Nursery Traders was David among a field of Goliath finalists in our award category—which consisted of corporate heavy-weights Boral Plasterboard, Downer EDI Mining & InterGen Australia—and ultimate winners Leighton Contractors.
"While we are pleased with our accomplishments to date we will continue to improve and set even higher standards for nursery industry green practice," added Tim
E:sales@nurserytraders.com.au
W: www.nurserytraders.com.au
T: 07 3390 1700
F: 07 3245 2011