Improvements at Victoria Dock
Plastic Reduction
In 2015, we began eliminating all BPA plastic, and reducing single-use plastic wherever possible at Mures Fish Centre. We now offer the following products in their place:
Takeaway cutlery – We offer Birchwood Bio Cutlery for all take-away orders. This is a product that is both biodegradable and compostable.
Straws – All plastic straws have been replaced with paper counterparts.
BioPak Containers and Cups – Our take-away packaging has all been replaced with BioPak products. This includes substituting our plastic cups for Bio Cups which are made from plant derived plastic, making them commercially compostable.
Glass Bottles - Over the last few years we have been focused on removing beverages that are bottled in plastic from our menu, and replacing them all with glass-bottled beverages. These are then collected by our rubbish collectors and recycled, along with all remaining plastics and aluminium waste generated by the business.
Cardboard Baler
In 2017, we installed a cardboard baler to process the large amounts of cardboard waste generated from product deliveries for Mures Fish Centre. Cardboard is loaded into the compactor which compresses large quantities down into manageable bales.
By compressing our carboard waste on-site, we drastically reduce the volume of the material and the space that it takes up, which also decreases the cost of the waste’s collection. Our carboard bales are then directly collected by our recycling company.
Fryers and Cooking Oil
In 2018 we replaced all fryers in Mures Lower Deck with Henny Penny Evolution Elite fryers. These fryers are specially designed to recover temperature quickly, affording them a very high energy rating and helping our business to reduce energy consumption. They have also allowed us to reduce our oil usage by 7%.
All the used oil that passes through our fryers is given to Johnson’s Used Oil Collection and sent to the mainland to be converted into Biodiesel. Biodiesel is a carbon neutral product considered to be a green alternative to diesel in that it is rapidly biodegradable and completely non-toxic.
Carbon & Energy Reduction
Mures Lower Deck currently runs two pellet heaters near the main and back entrance to the restaurant. These heaters have the lowest emission rate of any wood burner available in Australasia in that they are virtually smokeless. Pellet fuel not only reduces dependence on finite supplies of fossil fuels like oil gas and coal, it is carbon neutral, which means by utilising these heaters we are not contributing to greenhouse gas.
Laundry needs for the restaurants are also processed on site, and we recently made a change from an electrical drying unit to a new gas-operated industrial model. Gas has a 90% higher yield rate from extraction to delivery compared to electricity making it far more efficient and more environmentally friendly.
Water Conservation
In 2019 we looked into ways of reducing our water usage in Mures Lower Deck. We replaced our domestic top-loader washing unit and invested in a new industrial front-loader model, Speed Queen. Front loader washing machines use roughly 50 percent less water than top loaders. The sump system design installed in this unit also uses 11% less water than most other industrial front loaders, decreasing our water usage in this area by over 50%. This make also has high G-Force extraction which removes significantly more water from each load, reducing our energy costs and drying time.