Reporting success: celebrating CitySwitch FY2025 champions

CitySwitch members show how collective action across the commercial sector can accelerate the transition to low carbon workplaces.

In FY2025, our members continued to stride through set-backs, competing priorities, resistant colleagues and curly approval processes to reduce carbon emissions. Many report gaining a deep sense of accomplishment as a result.

These key results demonstrate CitySwitch members' collective impact in FY2025:

  • Carbon dioxide intensity per square metre fell from 31kg to 24kg

  • 50% of members now acquire electricity from renewable sources - rooftop solar, power purchase agreements or GreenPower

  • 73% of members measure scope 1 and 2 emissions and 58% measure scope 3 emissions.  There's a growing trend of quantifying value-chain emissions.  

You can read more about our FY2025 highlights in our annual report.

(add something about GHD taking 4 years to get FOGO)

Celebrating the FY2025 CitySwitch Champions

This year’s CitySwitch Champions exemplify leadership, tenacity and a commitment to continuous improvement.

Congratulations to everyone who contributes to our incredible collective action. It all counts. The ripple effects of your positive action are powerful.

People often think you need to complete huge, complex projects to be recognised as a champion, a leader. But that's not the case. Big things are achieved through small steps. We reward continuous improvement.

Akami Technologies

Baenziger Coles

Barry Nilsson

Climate Zero

Ecovantage

Epson Australia

GHD

IFM Investors

Lander and Rogers

MPA Construction

Steensen Varming

Tract Consultants

Turner and Townsend

Wotton Kearney

Action highlights

Here are some of the things our champions have been doing.

  • Transitioning from road to rail for transport of goods

  • Conducting climate risk assessments and preparing for climate-related financial risks

  • Changing cleaning contractors to extend the life of assets such as flooring and to reduce water and energy use

  • Use of ReSmart to divert hard-to-recycle items from landfill

  • Introducing of FOGO (food scrap) bins and coffee cup recycling

  • Tracking waste across construction projects all over Australia and introducing new recycling pathways for building materials like MDF board

  • Sharing lessons with other businesses and running educational sessions with other organisations in the same building

  • Embedding sustainability into policy, governance and culture

Why reporting matters

What gets measured gets managed. Reporting is critical for multiple reasons: it helps us advocate for more support for the office sector from the state and federal governments; it can lead to employee behaviour change through demonstrating success and momentum; it can unlock funds for future projects, and it can help you gain more support from stakeholders and your executive team.

What the champions teach us

We asked our champions what tips they'd share with other businesses. Here's what they had to say.

  1. You don't need a perfect data set to start.

  2. Progress beats perfection.

  3. Stay persistent and celebrate small wins.

  4. Sharing reporting results in real time can really help change employee behaviour.

  5. Use lease renewals to negotiate building upgrades.

  6. Classic – dare we say passive-aggressive – reminder posters can still work to reach the less sustainability-minded.

Looking ahead

Momentum is building. As expectations around climate performance continue to grow, CitySwitch will keep supporting members with the tools, data and connections needed to move further and faster.