Bringing innovation to sustainability

02/10/2017

Bringing innovation to sustainability

Downer recently joined forces with The Sustainable Future Collective to host the first ‘hackathon’ event - Hack Our Future - at the Kerrs Road office in New Zealand.

The hackathon event involved 32 students from The University of Auckland who aimed to come up with innovative solutions to making the Kerrs Road office more sustainable.

Tom Soderstrom, IT Chief Technology Officer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, launched the event, beginning with a presentation on the ground-breaking research and development currently taking place at NASA. Glen Willoughby, General Manager Information Technology, New Zealand, then presented to the team of students on 'innovation vs. invention,' sharing some helpful tips on sustainability innovation.

The students then separated into teams and were given five focal points on ways to revolutionise sustainability at Kerrs Road. These included:

Health & Wellbeing:  How can we help our employees to be more active during their work?

Improve communication: How can we use the building space to improve communication?

Growing numbers: Our employee numbers our growing, but our office isn't. How do we best make use of the space at Kerrs Rd?

Waste: How can we improve our waste management?

Energy: Our energy bill is high, how can we reduce it?

James Kafanelis, Glen Willoughby, Emily Townsend and Iain Peffers judged the participants and handed out prizes for first, second and third place.

The winners were:

  • 1st Place: awarded a prize of $1000: Mitchell Mackay, Jessica Harrison, Anna Wright, Jackson Lawrence – for the 'Energy' challenge
  • 2nd Place: awarded a prize of $500: Sahan Jayatissa, Karl Pereira, Sen de Silva, Janusha Gunasekara – for the 'Waste' challenge.
  • 3rd Place: awarded a prize of $200: Julia Nassar, Vasiliy Ilin, Ryan Cuthbert, Webb Hinton – for the 'Growing Numbers' challenge.

The Sustainable Future Collective is a student run society at the University of Auckland. It aims to bring a fresh and modern twist to sustainability.

Categories

Related articles