Malcom Rands of Ecostore, winner of the award for Mega Efficiency Innovation at the 2014 SBN Awards. Photo / Supplied
Following the NZI National Sustainable Business Network Awards last week Element profiled the winners. Read about the category winners below.
Communicating Sustainability Award:
Generation Zero
Pictured from left to right: Lauren Blackwell, Ryan Mearns, Niko Elsen, Cameron Stirling and Emma McInnes. Photo / Ted Baghurst
An infusion of youthful energy is transforming debate on issues like climate change and Auckland's transport future.
Generation Zero, a national youth-led organisation campaigning for action on climate change, is proving particularly effective in building grass roots coalitions and getting action.
An example that caught the attention of SBN Award judges was the Congestion Free Network Campaign, a collaboration between Generation Zero, TransportBlog and The Campaign for Better Transport. The campaign caught the eye of the Green Party, which incorporated it into policy. As New Zealand's transport network makes up over 20% of our total greenhouse gas emissions and almost 50% of our total carbon emissions, creating a transport system that is more efficient, cost-effective and sustainable has huge implications in creating a more sustainable nation.
Generation Zero's role in the campaign was to communicate to the general public in a way that was engaging, informative and built public support for the vision. The strategy included mass volunteer mobilisation, network-based campaigning, media engagement and public advertising. The campaign reached more than 150,000 people directly through conversations, flyers, posters, the website, advertising and media engagement, and generated more than 100 articles across mainstream print and broadcast media. Voters responded by electing to the Auckland Council and local boards several candidates who campaigned for the Congestion Free Network.
Solutions and strategy researcher Paul Young says Generation Zero formed after several in the group including himself went to an international young nation climate change summit in 2010 and recognised the importance of having a strong youth voice on climate change matters in New Zealand.
"In any area like this where you are pushing for social change or trying to affect the political process you need to be in for the long term. Building communities at the local level working on these issues is important for longevity. "Also, people - and especially young people - are a bit over talking about the problems, they want to focus on solutions. So many people get it and want to know what they can do to help."
Community Impact Award:
AgriSea NZ Seaweed
AgriSea general manager, Tane Bradley with owners Jill Bradley and Keith Atwood. Photo / Supplied
AgriSea provides work for some of the country's poorest and most remote communities.
Its business is turning seaweed into fertiliser and soil-conditioning products, and that means having people collect it from the shore to send to its processing plants in Gisborne and Paeroa. Co-founder Jill Bradley says family and community are built into the family owned business.
"We will only have other families who live in remote coastal areas, we don't want middle men, and people need to be paid properly. It's a well-paid industry from the beach up because we want quality."
AgriSea has a family friendly staff policy that encourages parents to spend time with their children and pays a living wage, not the minimum wage. The result is committed, talented staff and constant improvement in business systems. Bradley says she and husband Keith got into the business "by mistake" 20 years ago after they wanted to grow food for their family and became interested in seaweed fertiliser.
They gave up well-paid teaching jobs, "held hands and jumped off the cliff." AgriSea is now the market leader, supplying products for plant health, pasture health and animal health, including two thirds of the country's vineyards and a significant number of dairy farms. Bradley says sustainability includes looking after communities. "We put into those communities, particularly in Te Whanau a Apanui. We sponsor children whose parents don't have a lot of money to the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic to become marine scientists."
It also sponsors the Enviroschools' Maori liaison person, and is the sole funder of a six-year research project at Waihau Bay on the environmental effects of seaweed wild harvest on the marine coastal eco-system.
Sustainability for AgriSea underpins every business decision, including its vision to become a mainstream option for the horticultural and agricultural sectors by 2020.
Community Innovation Award:
Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre
The Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre. Photo / Supplied
Many towns and cities now have waste recycling operations, but the Whanganui Resource Recovery Centre stood out for the judges.
It's only been going just over a year, but it is already proving popular with residents. "People like to recycle rather than just throw stuff in the rubbish," says manager Ramari Te Uamairangi.
"More and more people are coming through, and we are getting positive feedback that it's a good service - friendly, clean, accessible and well organised."
The centre is the old town prison behind Cooks Gardens, which had been empty for over a decade. The public can drop off glass, paper and plastic for free - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Other rubbish, oil and green waste will be taken for a fee.
There is room in the facility for an education room and the office of Sustainable Whanganui, which is one of the partners in the venture along with the council and the local Iwi.
There is a secondhand shop, a Green Bikes operation and a Re-Use Academy that stores magazines, books, jars, broken pottery, garden supplies etc, housed in the old cells for craftspeople, schools and the public to repurpose. The judges say that underpinning the operation are fantastic feasibility studies with strong analysis and clear understanding of the systems and structures needed to build sustainability.
The combination of user pays and on-selling waste to larger recyclers means it is financially viable and employs a staff of six. There is also the strong partnership model, with a cross market approach involving corporates, public, Iwi, community and education.
Te Uamairangi says for Te Runanga o Tupoho it was an opportunity to be involved in a progressive business which would benefit not just its own people but the other residents of Whanganui. "We are all about the sustainability of the environment, looking after papatuanuku," she says.
Mega Efficiency Impact Award:
Econergy Ltd
For Econergy founder David Senn, the recent announcement about electricity retailers cutting what they pay for solar power fed back into the grid is great news. It means people considering solar can stop thinking the power company will pay for their installation (which never happens) and concentrate on what they are paying for power and how they can reduce it. That's where Econergy comes in, and why it won the Mega Efficiency Impact section of the NZI National Sustainable Business Awards.
The judges liked the idea that heat pump water heaters are changing a wasteful industry of hot water cylinders. Econergy guarantees a two-thirds saving in the cost of heating a household's hot water.
Senn says the figure on the 1000-plus units installed so far is closer to 75%, with a pay-back time on the $4500 device of just three years.
Even more impressive is the impact on the planet. So far Econergy water heaters have saved 7.5 million kWh of power and gas a year, a dollar saving of over $1.5m to owners, and the CO 2 reduction to date is nearing 1000 tonnes.
Energy demand is consistent through the year, so there is less demand in winter on generators for power, which is often met by thermal generation. "There's a lot this product could do if it was widespread," Senn says. Consumer magazine named Econergy the most efficient product on the market.
For solar users, running an Econergy heat pump during the day to heat a large cylinder will get the best out of both the pump and the solar system. "For a family that uses a lot of hot water, it makes sense to put one in whether they have solar or not," Senn says.
Mega Efficiency Innovation Award:
Ecostore
Over the next year, Ecostore estimates it will save at least 639 tonnes of CO 2 , the equivalent of 123,000 daily commutes, by changing its packaging.
It is switching 98% of its bottled product to new sugarcane-based HDPE bottles. That's enough to win it the Mega Efficiency Innovation category. Co-founder Malcolm Rands calls it the Carbon Capture Pak. He says he rejected previous plant-based "biodegradeable" packaging because there are no suitable biodegrading facilities in this part of the world and they would end up being mixed up with petroleum- based plastics, polluting the recycling stream.
"This stuff is molecularly identical to the high-density polyethylene that comes from petrochemicals. The only way you can tell the difference is by carbon dating - we have fresh-based plants, not plants hundreds of millions of years old. "As the sugarcane grows it captures the CO2 molecularly, we change that into plastic and that CO2 is kept out of the atmosphere as long as you recycle it or put it into landfill. If you burn it, it goes back into being carbon neutral, which is ok."
The sugarcane plastic is made from sugarcane (ethanol) suppliers certified by Bonsucro, a global non-profit organisation dedicated to reducing the environmental and social impacts of sugar cane production while recognising the need for economic viability.
The processing facilities that make the sugarcane ethanol operate almost exclusively on renewable energy that comes from the sugarcane's by-products. Any surplus power is sent to the grid, adding energy to Brazil's energy matrix. Rands says while the product is slightly more expensive, Ecostore is redesigning its bottles to have thinner walls without losing strength, so the cost should be about the same. "The only thing we have done that hasn't been done before is commitment.
The material has been around for three years now; the multinationals had first go, but they were too mean to have any points off their bottom line at all," he says.
Ecostore founder Malcom Rands was also named the joint winner of the Sustainability Champion Award at the 2014 SBN Awards. Read Element's profile of Rands here.
Renewables Impact Award:
Sunergise
The huge new solar array at Port Denerau, Fiji. Photo / Supplied
One of the aims of solar energy company Sunergise International is to educate people about solar.
"Most people think education means you go into schools, but we go into boardrooms, and that's where you can make the quickest difference," says co-founder and marketing director Lachlan McPherson.
Sunergise has won the Renewables Impact section for what it is doing as a full service, vertically integrated solar developer in New Zealand and the Pacific region.
The company finances, designs, installs and maintains customised installations for businesses on and off the grid. McPherson says they target chief executives or chief financial officers, aiming for installations of 80kW upwards. "In one conversation we do the equivalent of 20 or 100 houses, working on one site. It's a fast way to make a difference."
Commercial and industrial power users account for over 60% of New Zealand power consumption, but only 10% of connections. The hook for business is there is no capital outlay.
"All they see is the reduction in their power bill, as we put their roof to work for the benefit of them and the environment." The idea is to make each installation pay for itself, with jobs sized so there won't be excess power to feed back into the grid. What is necessary is scale, and the company's Pacific-wide growth is supplying that.
"We want to be a large regional player and we can do things in the Pacific a lot quicker than in New Zealand, and then bring back what we have learned," McPherson says.
After just two years Sunergise is producing over a megawatt of solar power, with another 3MW in the pipeline.
Renewables Innovation Award:
Wellington City Council
Oliver ter Ellen and Miranda Voke from Aro Solar. Photo / Supplied
Imagine the city as a laboratory for innovation. Then make it happen. That's something of what Wellington City Council achieved with its Smart Energy Challenge.
The council teamed up with some of the city's brightest social entrepreneurs from Enspiral, Generation Zero, and PledgeMe to support the development of community-led projects to reduce energy use and increase clean energy.
A range of events, workshops and corporate networking opportunities created a fun and inspiring environment to develop projects, and at the end of the challenge the entrants sought crowd funding through PledgeMe to go ahead, with matching funding of $23,000 from the council's Smart Energy Capital Fund.
Senior policy advisor Nigel Taptiklis says the challenge took some of the principles of business start-ups and design thinking. "We are building social labs and apply them to climate change and environmental problems like city resilience.
The challenge is designed to validate that something is doable, and that something is wanted - which is where the crowd funding comes in - because nothing new starts out profi table but it is probably going to be relevant if people want it," he says.
The three projects were: Shyft - a car-share scheme to reduce the numbers of cars needed in a centre city; Aro Solar - using crowd funding to install solar power on a community facility as a way to promote solar power within the community; Solair - using solar energy to heat some of the council's housing stock to reduce electricity use and power bills.
Energy Management Award:
Lion
Pictured from left to right: Malcom Brier, Paul Hardey, James Perrin, Darren Woodard, Paul Woods, Logan Campbell and David O'Carroll. Photo / Ted Baghurst
Making a business more sustainable often means improving existing systems and doing things smarter, rather than ripping things out and starting afresh.
The Pride, Lion's brewery in East Tamaki, is taking a continuous approach to sustainability, identifying and funding projects each year that cut its environmental footprint through energy, water and waste reduction. That approach has won it the award for Energy Management.
The big projects this year were a new pasteuriser cooling tower, which will save $250,000 a year, and switching over to LED lighting, which will save $165,000 a year. Even smaller maintenance efforts can pay off. Upgrading a steam accumulator is tipped to save $16,000 as year in running costs, $26,000 comes from eliminating compressed air leaks, and insulating steam lines cuts $10,000 from the power bill.
Pride's site environmental champion, James Perrin, says LED lighting will pay for itself in about two years through lower power use and maintenance costs, compared with than Lion's usual three-year payback for capital projects.
Floor staff are also more engaged in reporting hazards and suggesting improvements. "By becoming a sustainable business we are increasing our customer satisfaction and we are doing the right thing, so it is a business longevity bottom line but also setting sustainability goals for ourselves," he says.
Restorative Innovation:
Nancy Glen II
There was no winner in the restorative innovation sector, but judges commended trial work being done about the fishing vessel Nancy Glen II with a new lightweight trawl system developed by global rope and fibre company Dyneema.
The fishing industry has been challenged on questions of sustainability, and one of its responses has been technology innovation.
The new Dyneema lightweight trawl system uses a sort of turned mesh net that allow small and juvenile fish to swim free during trawl fishing. When the nets are under load, instead of the mesh panels closing up like conventional trawl nets, the Dynex rope mesh stays open.
The nets are stronger and lighter, which reduces drag and can cut fuel consumption by at least 20%. Ministry for Primary Industries observers on board the Nancy Glen II counted 13,837 fish captured covering 42 species, and estimated between 52% and 81% more small and juvenile fish were released than with a conventional trawl net. The trial is being closely watched and could set a new industry standard.
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One issue seemed harder to agree on than most - how big the crowd was.