Office tower saving water

Water usage reduced by 30%

Aurora Place at 88 Phillip Street in Sydney is a landmark building on the Sydney skyline. Designed by the world-renowned architect Renzo Piano and managed by Colonial First State Property Management, the building provides approximately 50,000 square metres in office space to some of Australia’s blue chip corporate tenants.

Colonial First State Property Management’s Michael Lanycia said, “Through stakeholder engagement, we recognise that our activities have social, environmental and economic impacts on clients, investors and tenants, as well as our employees and the community. Thus one of our most important priorities is meeting our responsibilities within the community by decreasing our carbon footprint,” he said.

Aurora Place has reduced water usage in a number of ways, including the use of pressure-reducing aerators at the taps, the installation of dual-flush systems and, significantly, the Uridan waterless urinals from Watersave Australia.

“After undertaking market research which focused on factors such as water savings, hygiene and operational costs, we decided to trial the Uridan waterless urinals in 2004. This was a great success with our tenants and the urinals were installed throughout the building in 2005,” said Michael Lanycia.

“Our tenants have been very accepting of the Uridan waterless urinals. Indeed we have been praised by the major tenants for implementing such an effective water-saving initiative,” he said.

In the last three years, these water-saving initiatives have reduced water usage at Aurora Place by 30% - approximately fifteen million litres of water.

Other benefits of the Uridan waterless urinals, in addition to the reduced water usage, according to Michael Lanycia, are the absence of odours in the men’s room as well as the low running costs compared to flushing urinals. “Our tenants are really happy with the Uridan waterless urinals as a well-designed quality feature which has achieved significant savings in water usage and that these water savings translate into carbon emissions reductions of 18.5 tonnes of CO₂,” he said.