WHAT DID SIGNATURE DO DIFFERENTLY A NOTE FROM THE CHAIRMAN Architectural technologist Robert Goodall agrees tenants can make a huge contribution to the running of an apartment building. As a member of the executive committee at the Signature Apartments in Redfern, he has involved tenants in the running of the building and helped to set up a social media site for owners and renters. ''It makes perfect sense to involve tenants,'' Mr Goodall said. ''A tenant should feel comfortable in the building and feel that it's their home too, then they'll be there for the longer term and are more likely to look after the unit and the building.

ROBERT’S STATEMENT TO JIMMY THOMSON – FLAT CHAT …..it “makes a more pleasant living environment for everyone; you won't get a high turnover of tenants, which is good for us and for the investors, and the whole building will benefit in terms of both atmosphere and value. '' Tenants have come to play a huge role in the 91-apartment block, making up about 40 per cent of the volunteers in the rooftop community garden and coming up with ideas in helping the building work better. ''On our Facebook page, we invite both owners and tenants to ask questions, make suggestions or receive information about what's going on,'' Mr Goodall says. ''Also, tenants are welcomed at our EC meetings to come and watch, and speak

Clothes hangers – these can be taken to any dry cleaners or laundramat – they will be happy not to have to purchase more – and it saves on the resources to make these - not to mention electricity and other resources used to manufacture them.

Plastic bags (eg from Coles/Woolworths) – sometimes corner stores are happy to take your spare bags and reuse them – ie places that do not use bags with branding – ask around your local area who may be happy to take these off your hands.

HOW SIGNATURE APPROACHED THE NEED TO REDUCE WASTE *They removed a large portion of red bins and replacing them with Yellow (recycling) bins *Being inner city they identified there may be a language barrier, so they put up new multi-lingual signage *They also did a letterbox drop *A social media campaign was also undertaken *Due to the gardens in the building you saw earlier that resident use they also introduced two green waste bins. *Notices were put up in the lift advising / reminding about recycling All this did lead to a noticeable drop in waste that was not recyclable. The committees advice is that as owners and tenants within all apartment buildings change so notices must be repeated every 3-4 months – and it should not be an everyday thing otherwise people gloss over it.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE *Choose 3 things that you didn’t know you could recycle – refer to our brochure – and start to do that every day/week *Download the brochure from our website – it is on our home page – and give a copy to every resident *If your recycling is not on each floor – see me to get a poster size to put up in your bin room. *If you have recycling on every floor – put a copy of our brochure up on the door – or where people will see it when they are dropping off their recycling *Talk to your committee about involving tenants in your scheme – the comments I’ve quoted from Robert (Chairman of Signature) are on our website – under Newsletters – its number 13.

GREEN STRATA This is a website with a wide variety of information as to what is possible and what some scheme’s have already achieved regarding sustainable waste.

SMART BLOCKS WEBSITE Shows how you can undertake other sustainable living options – through water, electricity, ventilation, pool services etc It has case studies to show what some scheme’s have achieved

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