Reducing your emissions can save your business money, improve your brand as well as help avoid global climate catastrophe – this easy-to-use new toolbox shows you how.
Business benefits
Climate change is no longer just an environmental issue, it’s something that could impact your business success and reputation.
“Consumers, employees and investors, are increasingly looking at the green credentials of the businesses they deal with” said BNZ’s General Manager of Sustainability, Rebekah Cain.
Being able to show that you’re taking steps to reduce your carbon footprint could become an important part of your brand, attracting new customers, workers and partners, here and overseas.
“Taking steps to reduce your footprint can make your business more efficient, more resilient and overall better performing, and that pays off especially when you’re building your presence and brand internationally,” says Grace Ashman, Sustainability Lead at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE).
Try the Climate Action Toolbox
How to get started today
If you’re keen to do your bit, take a look at the Climate Action Toolbox. The Toolbox focuses on key areas where your business could reduce its carbon footprint:
- moving people
- moving goods
- site operations and equipment
- office operations
- designing and making products.
You complete a short self-assessment to identify which of these areas are relevant to your business. You then get a tailored plan, which lays out specific actions you could take.
These actions could be really simple and easy to adopt, like cutting back on your team’s travel by encouraging working from home or holding meetings via Zoom rather than face-to-face. Or they could be bigger ticket items, like rethinking the way you use work vehicles, either by exploring car share services, or looking into electric or hybrid vehicles.
“We designed the Toolbox with Kiwi small businesses in mind, to make it as easy as possible for them to take climate action” said Matt Kennedy-Good, director of business.govt.nz. “We want every business in New Zealand to get involved.”
The Toolbox has already been popular, with over a thousand businesses using it on the first day it was launched.
The Toolbox outlines more than 40 actions you could take to reduce your carbon emissions, with step-by-step guides on each of them. It also includes more than 40 case studies of businesses already making these climate actions work for them.
Start using the Climate Action Toolbox
Every bit helps
You might feel like you’re not big enough to make a difference, but collectively New Zealand’s small-to-medium businesses could have a huge impact on the country’s emissions according to Rachel Brown, ONZMN, CEO of the Sustainable Business Network, which initiated and led the collaboration to create the Toolbox.
You don’t have to work in a field like manufacturing or transport to make an impact. So far, the majority of users of the Climate Action Toolbox work in an office-type environment. You can reduce the impacts of your daily office life by using less energy, looking at your supply chain and managing your waste. Small actions all add up.
See how to make a difference through your office operations
Trustworthy and useful
The Toolbox was created through a collaboration between the public and private sector, involving the Sustainable Business Network, business.govt.nz, Waka Kotahi (New Zealand Transport Agency), New Zealand Trade & Enterprise, Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority (EECA), BNZ, Meridian Energy and design agency DNA.
The result is a Toolbox created specifically for small New Zealand businesses. Feedback so far shows that users find it authoritative, trustworthy and useful, with information conveyed in an easy to understand format.
