Sustainability at our core
“Making a sustainable future possible together means keeping people safe, reducing emissions, protecting the environment, and using resources wisely. FY25 tested us with challenges, but also marked important progress. We advanced our safety and respect culture, reduced gross Methane and Carbon Dioxide emissions against our FY22 baseline, and expanded capacity to recover more resources across Australia. We remain focused on turning lessons into action and delivering sustainable outcomes for our customers and communities.”
Mark Schubert, CEO and Managing Director
Cleanaway is Australia’s largest provider of comprehensive waste management and resource recovery solutions. With more than 50 years of experience and a national footprint of over 350 sites, we proudly serve municipal, commercial, industrial, healthcare and government sectors. Our team of more than 10,000 people is united by a clear purpose: Making a sustainable future possible together.
Our Sustainability Framework brings this purpose to life through four pillars that guide how we deliver impact every day.
These pillars provide a clear structure for our sustainability efforts, ensuring we focus where we can make the greatest difference. They are aligned with our material focus areas and capture the tangible outcomes we create for our people, customers, communities and the environment.
By investing in innovation and advanced technologies such as energy-from-waste and renewable fuel initiatives, we are reducing landfill dependency, lowering greenhouse gas emissions and helping lead Australia’s transition to a circular economy.
We play a vital role in enabling Australia’s circular economy, working with our partners to ensure valuable resources are recovered from waste streams and returned to the value chain.
As a total waste solutions provider, we prioritise resource reuse, recycling and recovery wherever possible. When these options are not feasible, we offer safe and responsible, at-scale treatment and disposal solutions.
The goal of net zero compels us all to take action to reduce the impacts of climate change. Cleanaway is committed to reducing our emissions and helping our customers do the same.
To deliver on our mission requires the co-ordinated effort and hard work of our people, suppliers, and communities. Together, we fulfil our purpose of making a sustainable future possible together.
Our Sustainability Highlights
By recovering resources that would otherwise go to waste, we are replacing virgin materials with recycled alternatives, reducing emissions and supporting local manufacturing. Through our investment in renewable energy and innovative recovery pathways, we are creating practical solutions that help customers meet their sustainability goals and deliver on community expectations.
From powering homes with renewable energy captured from landfill gas, to turning used oil and cooking oil into new low-carbon products, these results show how Cleanaway is working at scale to close the loop on resources. Together with our customers and partners, we are proving that sustainable outcomes are not only possible, but already happening across the country every day.
For our customers, these outcomes translate into real and measurable benefits – reduced waste disposal costs, improved resource efficiency, and greater certainty in meeting regulatory and sustainability commitments. By integrating recovery and recycling into day-to-day operations, our customers can not only minimise environmental impact but also unlock value from materials that were once considered waste.
Protecting the environment is fundamental to how we operate. We continue to strengthen compliance across our network, resulting in a 69% reduction in regulatory enforcement notices since FY21, including a further 30% drop in FY25. This progress reflects our focus on “being brilliant at the basics”, supported by environmental toolkits rolled out to every site and backed by a national team of scientists and engineers providing practical expertise.
Fire risk remains one of our most critical operational challenges. With lithium batteries and other hazardous materials increasingly present in waste streams, we have invested more than $25 million over two years in advanced fire detection, suppression and monitoring systems. These measures have reduced the severity of fire incidents, though large-scale fires remain a risk we continue to manage.
We also know that protecting the environment means going beyond compliance. Our leaders and frontline representatives are embedding environmental accountability in their daily work, building a culture where environmental responsibility is owned at every level.
Cleanaway is taking practical steps to decarbonise our operations and support Australia’s transition to a low-carbon circular economy. We are proud to report that Cleanaway has exceeded its stretch LTI target in FY25 by achieving a gross Scope 1 methane emissions of 837kt CO2-e, which is 83% of the FY22 gross Scope 1 methane emissions baseline. This represents a 17% reduction in gross Scope 1 methane emissions over three years, and confirms our trajectory towards meeting our 2030 methane emissions target.
We also advanced fleet decarbonisation. Following our renewable diesel (HVO100) trial, we now offer low-carbon collection services to customers in NSW, achieving up to 90% lower emissions than fossil diesel. We also deployed a battery electric vehicle in Newcastle and began trials of hydrogen-powered trucks in Victoria, marking key milestones in scaling cleaner transport.
Beyond transport, our re-refining process transformed 65 million litres of used lubricating oil into 29 million litres of base oil – a circular solution that is up to be 58% less energy-intensive than refining from crude oil.
In FY25 we continued to strengthen our safety culture, embedding critical risk controls and rolling out leadership training deeper across the organisation.
This was the first year Cleanaway formally reported the Serious Injury Frequency Rate (SIFR), a metric aligned with evolving industry practice and sharpening our focus on fatal and life‑altering risks. We recorded 16 serious injuries, up from 12 in FY24, resulting in a SIFR of 0.7, above our target of 0.5. However, there was a 54% reduction in Serious Injuries from 1H to 2H with SIFR in 2H recording 0.4, below our annual target of 0.5.
Supporting this 2H reduction in Serious Injuries, we have accelerated the roll-out of key programs, including the Safe Control of Work, enhanced event investigation protocols and enterprise-wide critical risk assurance, all aimed at strengthening control effectiveness and reducing exposure to serious injuries.
We also worked side-by-side with customers and communities to drive better outcomes. From education programs in schools and councils to tailored sustainability solutions for businesses, these partnerships are key to reducing waste and supporting the circular economy. At the same time, we invested in responsible supply chains, local jobs and career pathways, ensuring that our economic contribution benefits the communities where we live and work.
