Zoos Victoria’s senior manager of environmental sustainability, Kiam Yoong, is passionate about a world in harmony with the natural environment. Key areas he works in include the development of environmental sustainability policies and strategies, climate change mitigation, alternative energy sources and carbon sinks, net zero emissions, carbon accounting, and zero waste to landfill strategy and implementation.
Yoong believes in a collective and collaborative approach to sustainability. He achieves this by presenting at conferences and seminars, supporting training and student projects with various universities, collaborating with other zoos, and also developing guiding papers for the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA).
He joined greenloop 22, blooloop’s sustainability in visitor attractions conference, to discuss Zoos Victoria becoming the first zoo group in the world to become carbon neutral back in 2013. Yoong also spoke about other key projects, such as green power, water recycling, zero waste to landfill, offsetting and ESG procurement scorecards.
Sustainability is everyone’s responsibility
Yoong noted that one of the most important sustainability projects is staff education. For this reason, Zoos Victoria has implemented an online internal qualification for staff for competency and awareness. This is called the Online Wisdom & Learning System (OWLS).
He said the group’s environmental management system is “everybody’s responsibility”.
“So it’s about bringing staff as well to that journey,” Yoong added. “This is really important. And that’s because, in all organisations, it’s not just the sustainability managers or whatever doing the job. It’s about everybody being skilled up to understand what their role is and understand what the impacts are right when they’re doing their work in terms of impacts on the environment, how they can actually manage their work more sustainably.”
Inside Zoos Victoria
Zoos Victoria is a world-leading zoo-based conservation organisation, dedicated to fighting wildlife extinction. Its four zoos are Healesville Sanctuary, Kyabram Fauna Park, Melbourne Zoo and Werribee Open Range Zoo. Each one provides a unique and immersive experience that attracts visitors from around the world.
“We’ve got a lot of programmes in place,” he said. “We see over 2 million visitors per year. We are like a little community, offering so much. It’s not just visiting the zoo. We’ve got Animal Hospital; we’ve got restaurants, we cater events. We have a wide range of impacts, in terms of energy usage, water usage, waste – animal poo and stuff like that.”
“We need to consider the whole lot in terms of carbon neutrality. As you know, our climate is changing.”
As a zoo-based conservation organisation, Zoos Victoria is committed to fighting wildlife extinction. Its duty and purpose is to tackle the devastating threats from climate change urgently. It does this through its own actions, through those of its community and through its vast and varied work for wildlife.
“Our mandate is fighting extinction, and a lot of animals are affected by climate change. We have a lot of campaigns about community-driven behaviour.”
The impacts of climate change
First, he touched on some of the impacts of climate change, including the extreme weather events that have been occurring with increasing frequency:
“If you look at the evidence we’ve seen in Australia, from 2019 to 2020, we had about 15,000 bushfires across the country. That impacts whole ecosystems. There are over 3 billion animals affected, including three threatened species and 37 threatened ecological communities in the path of bushfires.”
“That is a lot of habitat destruction. After the fire, too, there is a long-term biodiversity impact.”
Koalas are particularly affected by bushfires, as is the critically endangered Leadbeater’s possum. This a small mammal largely restricted to small pockets of alpine ash, mountain ash, and snow gum forests in the Central Highlands of Victoria.
Animals in the Alpine regions, he explained, are also affected by warming:
“If there is a lack of snow cover, the breeding cycle is disrupted.
“Not only is Zoos Victoria fighting extinction. We are also trying to counteract some of the factors that contribute to climate change.”
Sustainability at Zoos Victoria
“At the centre of our environmental programme is our environmental management system. This makes it everyone’s responsibility at Zoos Victoria to chip in to be sustainable.”
The structure, developed in 2010, means that everyone, from board level down to staff level, has a role to play in minimising environmental impacts:
“We’ve got three zoos, so three green teams, and three environmental leaders, to make sure that the operations are as sustainable as possible.”
The Zoos Victoria policy statement outlines its vision, which is to be the world’s leading zoo-based conservation organisation.
“This means we exist to protect and conserve wildlife and habitat both locally and internationally,” he says. “We want to reduce our carbon emissions towards net zero emissions, prevent pollution, protect our heritage values, use our precious resources more efficiently, and reduce waste to landfill. We want to make sure that we promote resource recovery and a circular economy.
“Recently, we incorporated an environmental, social and governance procurement framework (ESG). Wherever we can, we want to make sure that we build positive gains to the environment and also to prioritise and align with the sustainable development goals (SDGs).”
Progress so far
Yoong joined Zoos Victoria in 2008:
“In August 2008, the board approved our environmental policy and strategy, which set the framework for us to develop things. Even back then, we talked about carbon and carbon neutrality, and about putting programs in place to reduce all the other impacts as well.”
Charting the institution’s progress, he commented:
“In March 2010, I was selected to be the convener for environmental sustainability. Then, in 2012, we teamed up with a university to develop an official training programme called the Skill Up Green Project. That won the sports and arts award.”
“In March 2013, we were certified carbon neutral to the Australian Standard. In March 2014, we established sustainable development guidelines for development across all zones and produced our first prospectus.”
As a not-for-profit, the prospectus offered potential donors the opportunity to fund projects.
“It kickstarted quite a few major projects. The official zero-waste-to-landfill strategy started in 2017, but we already had a lot of programs on waste minimisation in place.”
An ongoing commitment at Zoos Victoria
The policy and strategy are ongoing:
“Every three years or so, we review them. In 2018, we implemented our Single-Use Plastics Policy. About a year ago, we developed our ESG procurement.”
He detailed the process:
“We started by monitoring our resource efficiency, measuring our environmental impacts, in order to understand them. If you don’t do this at the start, you won’t know what to do next. You need to know how much you consume in terms of different resources, or you won’t be able to develop good business cases to actually do those projects. After monitoring, we started a program on resource efficiency and waste diversion.
“I remember back then it was so normal to have as many as five fluorescent lamps. These days, that would be inconceivable.”
They are well past the stage of having to swap over to more energy-efficient methods now. Melbourne Zoo – the world’s first certified carbon-neutral zoo – installed solar PV in 2014.
“We bought a big vessel composter, able to compost two tonnes of organics waste per day,” he added. “We upgraded our butterfly house HVAC system, installed ground-mounted solar, and also have a massive program to update all our solar PV onsite. In January 2019, we procured, through a power purchase agreement, 100% renewable energy for Hillside Sanctuary. Last year, we powered Zoos Victoria’s through 100% renewable energy.”
Carbon footprint
Looking at the accurate carbon footprint, he said, it appears to have stagnated over the last year. In fact, it has reduced slightly. Additionally:
“Back then we had 1.9 million visitations. Now we’re at over 2 million. We’ve actually curbed and reduced our carbon footprint a little bit. Over the last few years, we have embarked on this massive renewable energy campaign that has driven down our carbon footprint tremendously.”
“We expect by this coming financial year that we will be left with around 4000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions that we will have to think about in terms of putting programs in place to remove them.”
The priority now, he says, is to look at decarbonisation through gas and transport fuels.
Zoos Victoria’s waste strategy
Returning to the zoo’s zero-waste-to-landfill strategy, he added:
“It’s interesting because we were quite high up there in terms of tonnes of waste. As you can imagine, a lot of visitors generate a lot of waste, especially organic waste. This program has reduced our waste significantly, and our diversion rate has also increased, as a result.”
Waste diversion rate, sometimes called landfill diversion, is the percentage of waste a business keeps out of the landfill.
“Our target is 90%, and we’re currently 1% shy of that target. One of the key programs that have driven this excellent diversion rate is the aerated composting bays, or in-vessel composters. Our new three-bin waste system, where we have a bin for recyclables, one for compostables and one for soft plastics, has also driven a few percent off. We don’t have a landfill bin. We try our very best to recycle everything that we can in Victoria. We’ve also got a sludge de-watering and composting facility.”
Water efficiency is also a big topic:
“We have a water recycling plant at Melbourne Zoo. We currently produce 80 to 200 megalitres of water per year, depending on rainfall. Half of our water consumption comes from recycled water. Water is recycled from wetland systems and vehicle wash downs, as well as cleaning of bridges and things like that.
“It goes back to the water treatment plant to be reused again, in a circular system. There are about five kilometres of pipes all around Melbourne for that purpose.”
ESG at Zoos Victoria
Although the institution had considered ethical procurement in the past, environmental, social and governance (ESG) is relatively new to it.
“We were a fair trade workplace, but this is a formal system or framework that we have now established.”
ESG is a strategic framework for identifying, assessing, and addressing organisational objectives and activities. These range from the company’s carbon footprint and commitment to sustainability to its workplace culture:
“It is really important because we’ve looked at outputs that we need to take care of, but this also looks at inputs coming into the zoo, so we can ensure they are as sustainable as possible. Overlaid on that, there are the policies and procedures that allow us to develop standards for specific key elements, and to establish criteria for assessment.”
After the assessment, a score indicates clearly whether the institution wants to deal with the person or product concerned:
“It’s about seeing what standards there are, and using them, evaluating them in terms of environmental, social and governance factors. With seafood, for instance, in environmental terms, we would look at whether the bycatch is sufficiently low, and the fish stocks sufficiently high.
“For the environmental and social categories, we would be looking at ethical practices and neutral human dispatch. For governance, we would make sure licenses to harvest seafood are in place, and that there is an MSC Chain of Custody Standard ecolabelling. This ensures fish and seafood products have been caught by certified sustainable fisheries.”
Carbon neutrality is key
Carbon neutrality is key to Zoos Victoria:
“Everybody is talking about net zero emissions. It is the trend. For us, carbon neutrality at the start is so important. It means you don’t have to wait to be net zero and then buy carbon offsets. It’s better to be neutral now than to wait until 2050 to become carbon neutral only after your reduction program.”
In short, he adds:
“We are carbon neutral as we continue to reduce our impact; we’re not waiting for the 2030 or 2050 mark. We look at projects that have significant co-benefits in biodiversity as well as community development.
“The Environmental Management System (EMS) part is about everybody’s responsibility. It’s about bringing staff on that journey. This is really important in all organisations. It’s not just about the sustainability managers or whoever they are doing the job. It’s about everybody being skilled-up to understand what their role is, and to understand what the impacts are, and how, when they’re doing their work, they can manage it more sustainably in terms of their impact on the environment.”
