KEY POINTS:
It was over a casual neighbourhood chat that Auckland's Maike Blackman realised the wave of pressure to go eco-friendly was leaving resource-strapped businesses gasping for breath.
She has since spun the idea of helping small companies "go green" into her new business - called the hothouse - and says it happened just in time to jump on the swing towards sustainability.
The neighbour she was chatting to happened to be fashion designer Kate Sylvester, who told Blackman she wanted to reduce the toxicity of her business but didn't know where to begin.
So Blackman began breaking it down for her - explaining that a few small, manageable steps were key to "greening" the company's operations.
Blackman was called in to the Sylvester stores to implement the changes, starting with developing an environmentally-focused mentality at staff level, then reducing power consumption and switching cleaning products.
It was then that Blackman realised that if a business like Sylvester's needed her help, others did too.
Last year, calling on the expertise of friend Kate Medlicott, who has an environmental engineering background, Blackman formed the hothouse (www.thehothouse.org.nz) to help small to medium-sized businesses reduce their environmental impact.
"It's about getting back to basics," Blackman says. "A lot of businesses will have an environmental mission statement, well, that's just the first step. We encourage them to become part of the Sustainable Business Network, to reduce their footprint and to offset the rest."
Drawing on Blackman's public relations background, Medlicott's experience in United Nations projects, and their shared desire to preserve the earth for their children, the pair began auditing a few businesses to identify areas of potential change and working with the companies to see those changes to fruition.
With her background working on sustainability projects for larger companies through Landcare Research, Emma McConachy, who joined the company early this year, fills in the gaps in developing auditing and reporting skills.
"We are looking at how we can take the environmental issues and turn them into [formal practices] to embed [into] an organisation. We develop something that is focused, follows a pattern, is traceable and measurable," Blackman says.
The hothouse team usually begins making changes in areas such as using paper responsibly, streamlining office processes, reducing unnecessary travel and switching to eco-friendly products.
"There's got to be a mind shift," says Blackman.
In each case, the hothouse establishes a green committee with representatives of the client's staff. "When staff can take ownership, it motivates them to keep going," says Blackman.
While a company's investment in sustainability will generally pay for itself through long-term savings, the clients approaching the hothouse usually do so to meet the consumer's commitment to supporting green business, Blackman says.
"Consumers are [embracing] sustainability and they vote with the dollar."
With five clients and others in negotiation, the hothouse women believe they have set up a viable business and, a month ago, all left their part-time jobs to focus on the company.
"We set ourselves a target of what we wanted to earn this year and we have already hit that," Blackman says.
Working from home also keeps costs down - as well as the company's carbon footprint.
Blackman says that being regular, down-to-earth mums has worked in the company's favour. "Clients are happy we don't arrive in suits but also happy we aren't dreadlocked vegans."
McConachy, who has worked on similar projects during the past three years, thinks the hothouse has tapped into the market at exactly the right time.
"Soon what we do is going to be like economic accounting."
