How Bayfair fights for the planet

Shoppers at Bayfair.

Tauranga's Bayfair Shopping Centre has become an exemplar in business sustainability during the dozen years of commitment by centre manager Steve Ellingford to reducing its environmental footprint.

"They have been doing this for a long time and Steve's made a massive difference to Bayfair," said Rachel Brown, chief executive of the Sustainable Business Network.

"They have some pretty innovative things going on there, which in terms of the retail space keeps them ahead. "Steve's pushing the seams of good activity and he's very open to looking at new ideas. "He has done some phenomenal stuff around water and energy."

Bayfair is Tauranga's biggest shopping centre with foot traffic of around 5.7 million people per annum. Under Mr Ellingford's environmental drive over the past decade Bayfair has:
- Changed how food-court waste is managed. Bayfair now diverts 70 per cent, or 200 tonnes, of centre waste from landfill each year - reducing its annual waste cost by 20 per cent since 2003.
- Carried out a full centre LED lighting retrofit that will reduce energy consumption by 62 per cent, saving the centre an estimated $100,000 per annum, with payback over two to three years.
- Installed a grey and rainwater harvesting system, which will reduce consumption of potable water by 60 per cent, potentially saving up to two million litres per year.

"Doing these things should be sound practice for all businesses," said Mr Ellingford. "If you're not doing this now as part of your business model, I don't think you've got a sound, sustainable business."

His mantra is that reducing expenditure while growing a business and making a contribution to the community, the environment and the economy is not as daunting as it might sound.

Bayfair got its sustainability programme under way in 2003, using a major waste recycling initiative to set an example.

"A shopping centre food court is ground zero for waste production," said Mr Ellingford. "Our 440-seat food court, with more than $7.5million in annual sales, has 100 per cent of customer-generated waste collected and sorted by dedicated and trained staff."

Mr Ellingford said he believed Bayfair's approach to managing food-court waste - in which everything is sorted by centre staff and nothing goes into common waste bins - was unique in the New Zealand retail space.

Rebecca Maiden, Tauranga City Council's waste minimisation programme leader, said Bayfair had been one of the most consistent businesses to embrace waste minimisation and separated food waste to an unusual degree.

"I don't think I have seen it in a shopping centre before and it works really well, because it means they can divert all of their waste to the compost site," she said. "They're saving money because it's not going to landfill and they are also keeping organics out of landfill, which can be beneficially used to produce compost."

Ms Maiden added that Bayfair had also taken a very holistic approach with environmental issues. "They've looked at waste, they've looked at water, they've looked at energy, and they do a lot of community social initiatives as well. They have been chipping away at it over a number of years and have really tried to imbed it in the way the business operates, rather than being a feelgood thing."

Mr Ellingford said the learning from the waste initiative was that one lofty goal, once achieved, created the momentum for the next.

"We've recognised how the changes we've made can contribute to a circular economy, where waste is used to build capital and create resources for the future," he said.

Another learning was the need to focus on the big areas of opportunity. In late 2014, Bayfair became the first shopping centre in New Zealand to complete a full-centre retrofit of LED lighting, replacing 2500 fixtures. It also established a recycling programme for the redundant fittings, diverting 2500kg of metal from landfill.

The subsequent reduction in energy consumption of 62 per cent was expected to save more than $100,000 per annum.

The cost of the project was supported by an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) subsidy and highlighted the need to work with good partners, said Mr Ellingford.

The energy management strategy had already reduced overall consumption since 2003 by around 3.75 million kilowatt hours. The partnership with Philips and EECA to conduct the LED retrofit would further reduce energy consumption by 62 per cent per annum.

Michael Kain, a lighting consultant with Philips New Zealand, said Bayfair had been the biggest individual corporate business project the company had worked on in Tauranga.

The retrofit lighting industry was becoming a huge market nationally. "It's a big focus of our business to encourage large energy users to look at the possible energy savings they could make," he said.

Bayfair's other major initiative has been around water use, and last year the centre launched a greywater and rainwater harvesting system. Mr Ellingford said Bayfair's public central amenities area used about 8589 litres of water per day. It was expected the rainwater harvesting would capture and replace 18 per cent of the potable (flushing) water supply each year and capture and use 42 per cent of greywater, reducing consumption of potable water by 60 per cent of the area's current water usage.

Tauranga City Council's Rebecca Maiden said she believed there had been a sea change locally in terms of major businesses being willing to embrace issues such as waste minimisation. Examples included the Green Star sustainability rating awarded to Sharp Tudhope Lawyers' new $13.5 million headquarters in Devonport Rd.

Tauranga utility Trustpower, which will soon be moving into its own new purpose-built building in the central business district, was also embracing environmental principles, said Ms Maiden.

"We've done waste audits with Trustpower in their current location, and we're just going to do another audit to see what is working now and what they need to incorporate into their development of the internal logistics of their new building. "They are another example of a company that is trying to get in early and imbed sustainable practices into the development of their new building."

Ms Maiden said change tended to come in waves and often depended on who was working in the organisation. "Those organisations like Bayfair, which say that in everything we do we're going to minimise our environmental impact, they are the ones that continue it and end up being standouts."