How one company has carbon emissions on the run.
Three years ago, when Matt Whyte had his first meeting after joining Resero Group and mentioned the word "sustainability", it provoked an unusual reaction.
"Everyone fell silent and looked sideways," he says, recalling the moment. Whyte is now sustainability spokesman for the group which owns two leading design, manufacturing and distribution businesses (Sebel and Furnware) providing furniture and spatial design consulting services to the education, healthcare, hospitality and public sectors in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and other international markets.
In those three years, he has been driving Resero's move to reduce carbon emissions "not just because it was the right thing to do for the planet but also because it brings some very real cost savings".
Not that it has been an easy journey and one Whyte says is still in progress. It was, he says, "pretty scary" to begin with.
"We had to start by finding out exactly what our emissions were. We thought we would find we had a pretty small emissions number because a lot of what we produce (for example, furniture for schools) does not have a lot of visible emissions."
Think again. It turned out Resero was emitting 5000 tonnes of CO2 a year. To put that in context, the US Environmental Protection Agency says an average petrol car produces about 4.6 tonnes of CO2 a year (based on 9.2km per litre over an annual distance travelled of 18,500km). So Resero was emitting the equivalent of almost 1100 cars a year. In terms of tree planting to offset emissions, one tonne of CO2 needs 31-46 trees to be planted.
Their biggest issue was waste to landfill – a big contributor to human-related methane pollution through landfill gas emissions. Resero's manufacturing plant is in New South Wales and uses coal-fired electricity, another big emissions factor, as was their road freight and car fleet.
"Waste was our biggest problem," Whyte says. "It was an out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing. We paid the bill every month and trucks came and took it all away. No one really dived into what was happening."
So Resero found waste providers who pledged they could cut waste emission by 85 per cent, simply by splitting out waste systems at source – a little like a bigger version of household recycling.
"Landfill waste is expensive and getting more so," says Whyte. "We are forecasting that we will, in about five years, be paying half as much if we'd continued our previous landfill operations."
Solar power is in the works for their manufacturing plants (and is already in place at the Hastings office in New Zealand) – not a total solution but is forecast to drop emissions by 23 per cent and electricity bills by 11 per cent, once installed.
"You can view that alongside the fact that new contracts for NSW electricity are tripling because of the cost of coal increasing," he says.
Resero have replaced half their fleet of internal combustion engine cars with hybrids, dropping their petrol bill by 40 per cent so far – and are predicting it will eventually be cut by 70 per cent as the rest of the fleet is replaced.
"That's the beauty of all this," says Whyte. "It is saving us money as well. We are not perfect by any means; we have more to do but we are heading in the right direction."
The next step is to improve the raw materials they use in their various products – steel, polypropylene and particle board. Steel and particle board are "very recyclable", says Whyte and more work is being done to establish how they can include these materials in their products.
"But the Holy Grail is to turn our plastic chairs into 100 per cent wholly recycled chairs, so that new ones are made out of the old ones – and we believe it is possible."
Apart from the environmental and cost savings, Whyte agrees with a recent Deloittes survey from the US which revealed that about a third of US businesses rated the social impact of sustainability as the best signal of success for their company – ahead of elements like customer satisfaction, financial performance and employee retention.
"The thing is, I think sustainability contributes to all those areas too," says Whyte. "We do a lot of work with government agencies and we are seeing more and more that sustainability is a key requirement in their tender process. Our account managers, just in the last six months, have started asking for documentation [so they can show customers what is being done in the name of sustainability] – so it is becoming in demand from other customers too.
"As for our teams, we have found this whole thing has snowballed. "I now have colleagues coming to me with all sorts of good ideas about emissions – they are taking pride in it."
ANZ is supporting business customers in their sustainability ambitions with the ANZ Business Green Loan. It can be used to fund initiatives supporting energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable land and water use and the building, renovating or purchasing of green buildings.
Offer subject to change. Eligibility and lending criteria, terms, conditions and fees apply.