Small Actions, Big Results

from Australasian Leisure Management Issue 151 2022

Eden Park’s New Experiences

Lower image: Seadragonz' Seth Malacari (left) and Bronwyn Myles with ASSA’s Sustainability Award.

Seth Malacari explains Seadragonz Swim School’s commitment to sustainability

Seadragonz Swim School recently won the Sustainability Award at the 2022 Australian Swim Schools Association’s National Excellence Awards.

The private swim school in in the suburb of Forrestdale on Perth’s southeastern edge was purpose built in 2007 with sustainability in mind, featuring a range of initiatives including recycling 100% of its wastewater, using solar power, and reducing, reusing and recycling everything possible.

Owners Lari and Bill McDonald take caring for the environment seriously, and this is reflected in their business. To ensure their efforts reach far into the future, Seadragonz takes a threepillar approach to sustainability: considering environmental, social, and financial factors.

Here they share some insight into why this approach is so effective.

Everywhere we look there is talk about climate change, sustainability, and carbon footprints. Being environmentally conscious is a goal of many industries, but the Aquatics industry often lags on truly sustainable initiatives. As a huge consumer of water, we have a responsibility to ensure our practices are environmentally sound to preserve this precious resource for future generations. We also have a responsibility to our young swimmers to make socially conscious and ethical choices about how we manage our time and financial resources. The reasoning behind this approach is simple: the better we manage our resources (including our money), the better equipped we are to invest in sustainable programs and infrastructure, and the greater our outcomes will be.

To truly create change in our workplaces and swim schools requires a double approach of making both large and small-scale actions. Small actions are easiest to enact but are often overlooked by businesses trying to make a large-scale statement straight off the bat. What is the point of investing millions of dollars into solar power if your company then goes bankrupt?

Small actions not only create immediate benefits to the environment but have a run-on effect financially and socially. The below examples show this effect.

Switching to a paperless administration system: This benefits the environment by reducing paper use, plus it saves you money on paper, printing, storage, and potentially staff costs, and shows your customers you are taking care to reduce your use, which generates social favour. In the long run, as the global demand for paper decreases, we will eventually see a reduction in deforestation which is one of the greatest ecological threats our planet faces. Recycling/upcycling unneeded equipment: It may be easier to throw out old kick boards when your new stock comes in or to store surplus office chairs in the cupboard to gather dust, but this is costing our planet in the long run. By donating surplus equipment to those in need, you stop that product being reproduced (the environmental impact of creating a product from scratch is enormous), and you foster a sense of community by sharing resources with those who need it more than you. Forming these types of relationships with community stakeholders is always going to be good for business.

There are countless small actions we can take in our industry that have this

sort of effect, from switching to ethical suppliers to cycling to work. Small steps do not require a large financial investment up front, but will save you money in the end, which can then be used to invest in larger scale projects.

Larger scale projects are often out of reach for businesses because setting something up like solar panels, a BioCycle system to recycle wastewater or installing new water-wise taps and showers can be expensive.

Therefore, we must be financially sustainable as well as thinking environmentally, and socially. We cannot have success in one area without the others. Consider the installation of new showers. This may cause your business to close for a time, as well as having an outward cost to it. By using the money saved through our smaller actions, we can offset the cost of such a project. By generating social favour in our community, we can weather closures because our customers care enough about our business and about what we are trying to achieve that they will return, and likely be happier knowing we are investing in their children’s future. By investing in water-wise products, we influence the market to create more of these products.

Big change starts with small steps. Look around your centre and see what actions you can take right now. From eliminating single use plastics, to turning the lights off in empty rooms, or watering the plants with recycled water, there is always something that can be improved.

Creating meaningful, sustainable change in business is not easy, but we have a responsibility to care for our planet, no matter what industry we are in. As huge water consumers, the Aquatics industry needs to think seriously about how we can reduce our impact on the environment to ensure generations to come are able to enjoy the aquatic environment just as we have.

In addition to the ASSA Award, in May Seadragonz won a City of Armadale Switched On Business Award for their commitment to environmental sustainability and for reducing the environmental footprint of their business.

In 2017, Seadragonz was also the recipient of the Royal Life Saving Society - Australia ‘Excellence in Aquatic Safety - Induction and Professional Development’ Award.

With a 17 metre, three-lane pool, Seadragonz caters for children from eight weeks of age right through to Bronze Medallion level. Seth Malacari is with Seadragonz Swim School.