Our community has always been the backbone of the RUC. We believe in supporting the people who support us, and part of that is taking care of our shared environment.

For years, the RUC has been ahead of the game in terms of being an environmentally friendly venue.

We have a number of policies and measures in place to ensure we are as sustainable as possible, because the health and wellbeing of our community, and the environment, are important to us.

Making a commitment to our ongoing environmental sustainability isn’t simply the right thing to do, we have seen results that prove it’s the smart thing to do as well.

The RUC installed a huge solar panel system on our roof that generates our own energy for the Club to offset our electricity usage from the grid.

We have managed to cut energy, water, and waste bills while also using our sustainability programs as a tool to engage with members, staff, and community organisations such as the ACT Government’s Actsmart.

All our light fittings use energy-saving light bulbs, significantly reducing their environmental impact due to the sheer number of light bulbs in our venue.

The RUC is an Actsmart-accredited recycling business. The Business Recycling Program inputs the best practice of waste management through a ten-step program reducing environmental impact.

To encourage people to leave their cars at home, we provide multiple locations for our visitors to lock up their bikes.

Reducing our waste

Most of the beers available at the RUC are offered on tap – cutting out the need for bottles and cans which all too often end up in landfill. The cardboard from cases of beers is also cut out with the use of kegs and beer taps.

We have built a composting area made out of beer pallets where all our food waste is deposited and turned to compost with green waste from our bowling greens and gardens.

Actsmart Business Recycling Accreditation

As part of our accreditation to the Actsmart Business Recycling Program, the RUC now separates our waste streams including paper and cardboard, glass, organic waste, and general waste.

We have:

• Appointed an implementation coordinator for the program
• Conducted waste summaries
• Developed a waste management plan
• Educated our staff on best practices for waste management and recycling.

We also continually monitor our progress to look for ways to improve. Our accreditation has helped us keep the Club’s waste costs down as well as reducing the environmental impacts of sending waste to landfill.

RecycleAbilities – young people with disabilities supporting the environment

Another initiative we support is RecycleAbilities, a program that supports young neurodiverse recycling specialists making a difference in their community by collecting recyclable bottles and cans and donating proceeds to charity.

So far, Ryan and the RecycleAbilities team have collected over 35,000 containers, with donations made to ACT Wildlife, OzHarvest, Room to Read Australasia, ACT RSPCA, and the Salvation Army.

Straws Suck Campaign

We do not supply single-use plastic straws, but can provide paper straws on request. This not only helps the environment, but it also stops our sink drains clogging up with plastic straws.

Landscaping reuse

The green waste from our bowing greens is added to compost, used by the ANU for their cricket pitches, or used as mulch for our garden surrounds. Our home-grown composting station has been a great success. We made the compost station out of disused beer keg crates, food scraps from our kitchen, and green waste from our bowling greens and gardens.

Business Energy and Water Program

The RUC has used the ACT Government’s Business Energy and Water Program to upgrade to more efficient technologies. We upgraded all of our lights to LED, resealed our fridges, and installed double glazing to reduce energy waste.

The Program offers rebates of up to $5,000 for eligible ACT businesses who want to be more water or energy-efficient by making upgrades to technologies such as lighting, appliances, heating and cooling, refrigeration, toilets, and tapware. The Business Energy and Water Program helped us lower operating costs by reducing our water and energy use. This, in turn, helps the ACT lower greenhouse gas emissions.

The next upgrade we are looking at is replacing our old gas furnaces with something more efficient and environmentally sustainable.

If you want to find out more about how the RUC is promoting sustainability in the community, check out our community page.