ecoBiz story - Endeavour Foundation
New opportunities for sustainable community service
The opportunity to learn more about sustainability allowed Endeavour Foundation at Noosaville to make significant savings in energy and waste, reduce bills and create a sustainable focus among the people they support and staff.
The Endeavour Foundation Noosaville Learning and Lifestyle hub was founded in 1998 and supports adults with disability who are looking to learn new things, socialise, and access their local community.
The hub joined Business Chamber Queensland’s ecoBiz program in 2020 and already have achieved star partnership in energy and waste, having reduced intensity by 39% and 40% respectively.
“Business Chamber Queensland’s sustainability team conducted an audit originally and gave us some fantastic tips on ways to be more sustainable. They really left no stone unturned and went through our bins to look at how we could reduce waste,” Site Manager Julie Elford said.
“We are all able to do our part in helping to reduce waste in the environment and both the people we support and our staff love finding new ways to be sustainable.
“ecoBiz increased our awareness of the environment and educated us in reducing waste and in turn we have reduced the imprint our service has on our environment.
“As a result, we’ve reduced the amount of waste going into our bins, the people we support are recycling more and through the containers for change program are actually making money to spend on the activities they want to do, and we’re saving on our power bill as a service too.”
Ms Elford said there were plans to continue to implement changes and encourage people to be more sustainable at home as well.
“The people we support and our staff had an interest in our service becoming more sustainable, reducing costs and giving everyone the opportunity to learn more about sustainability,” Ms Elford said.
“Becoming more sustainable is very worthwhile and we’d highly recommend the ecoBiz program to others.”
Endeavour Foundation was founded in Brisbane in 1951 by a group of parents whose children with disability were struggling to access to education.
They believed their children had the same right to an education as anyone else and fought hard to ensure they got it, Ms Elford said.
Endeavour Foundation expanded across Queensland as more specialist schools were opened and later transitioned into providing services for adults.
“It is exciting and rewarding to see the growth in the people we support. To see people experiencing things they haven’t done before and achieving goals they want to. We are passionate about being able to support people to have the opportunity to experience things in life that most people take for granted,” Ms Elford said.
“The people we support are loving giving back to the local community and volunteering with Meals on Wheels – helping provide nourishing meals to people who need them.
“They also volunteer at the local op shop where they get satisfaction and confidence from engaging with community members. Each week, we contribute and participate in the local area and activities such as visiting local library, shops, cafés and getting involved with other recreational activities.”
How Endeavour Foundation Noosaville achieved ecoBiz Star Partnership:
- Use fans and open windows to capture natural breezes, making the building cooler and reducing reliance on air-conditioning.
- The team have all become more conscious of recycling and what items to recycle.
- Use a more sustainable temperature on air-conditioning in winter and summer months.
- Collect cans and bottles and take to the recycling plant to exchange for money, allowing more resources for activities and gives the people the team supports more opportunity to get out into the community.