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When they have finished their salads and sandwiches, the staff at the Sustainable Business Network's New Lynn office throw their scraps to the worms. Once the worms have recycled the scraps, people compete for the worm casts, using them to feed the pot plants in the office or
the vegetables growing at home.
With worms, what goes around comes around in the most renewable way. Recycling waste food is just one of many sustainable activities that are happening at work.
Rachel Brown, CEO and founder of the SBN in 2002, has a professional and personal commitment to walking the talk. Brown and her staff in offices around New Zealand manage a forum for businesses interested in sustainable development practice. The network's 750-strong membership includes small and medium-sized businesses, government organisations, corporations and not-for-profit organisations. The drivers for sustainable development practice are business success and improving environmental and social outcomes.
Sustainability was a factor in the decision to relocate to New Lynn from central Auckland.
"When we were looking for new premises we did an analysis of where everyone lived. New Lynn was the best place in terms of distance and transport and the office is close to bus and train stations," says Brown.
The SBN team also plants trees in local areas to offset vehicle use and has been involved in the Twin Stream Waitakere project to re-vegetate the streams.
A recent focus on transport has generated further alternatives to people using cars.
"We use teleconferences and video Skyping around the country and have flexi-work so people can work at home and in the office. This also suits staff who are mothers."
As an office-based organisation, SBN has paper-based issues that they address through recycling. They also keep energy consumption and waste to a minimum.
"We started with the easy things such as buying organic, Fair Trade products," says Brown. "We don't use disposable cups and get our crockery from Trade Aid or a local artisan. When people start work with us we give them a refillable coffee cup that they carry in their bag and we also collect takeaways in our own bowls."
And now the New Lynn office is looking for premises in a greener building to assist with energy and water efficiencies. They would be happy to be part of a retrofit to introduce other features such as solar panels and "green" products made by their members.
Being truly sustainable is not easy, Brown admits. Fossil oil and its derivatives are used in a vast number of products and processes.
"We don't need to persuade our members that issues such as oil are serious. Everybody is going to hit up against it and our member companies are already starting to look at this. Some are looking at the viability of exporting in the longer term and how to make [products] closer to source. Some are just going to sell locally but that doesn't mean we can't sell our ideas."
Being "green" in retail presents its own challenges to David Spalter, who manages Huckleberry Farms organic produce stores in Auckland.
"It can be hard to identify how to be more energy-efficient," says Spalter. "We install eco lights but retail has to be brightly lit and refrigeration consumes a lot of power."
That said, his staff and customers have been up and running for years with the philosophy and practice of sustainability. They recycle a lot and the organic waste from the stores is highly sought after by free-range pig farmers to feed their animals.
One of the criteria for the store's grocery-buying committee is how products are packaged.
"If it's over-packaged we'll go back to the manufacturers and say, 'We don't like the fact that it's in a bag, within a bag, within a bag'. Our customers don't need things to be highly packaged to buy them," says Spalter.
And the stores' latest re-usable shopping bag, made of used billboard skins with carpet webbing offcuts for handles, could be the most "eco" bag in the country, he believes.
The Huckleberry Farms stores traded plastic check-out bags for paper ones years ago.
"Biodegradable plastic bags are not truly green, as they break down in the soil and leave deposits of plastic everywhere, so we've resisted using them," says Spalter.
Wellington-based communication management company Datamail has spent the past year imbedding sustainable practices at work. Group CEO Gary Woodham is impressed with the results.
"Our major waste is paper, cardboard and plastics. We have created recycling programmes that divert around 80 per cent of waste generated on site away from landfill," he says.
The 350 staff at Datamail are encouraged to contribute and vote on their ideas via the intranet. A committee of GreenKeepers ensures they stay on track in practice. Ideas for a worm farm and more sustainable staff transport are under discussion; recycled drink cans have already raised money for a charity.
"I'm quite blown away by the enthusiasm of people around this initiative," says Woodham, who speaks with all staff once a month.
"I'm finding people driving this have children at primary and intermediate school and they are picking up what their kids are learning."
Other sustainable practices include recycling water from roof catchment for urinals and watering onsite gardens. There are "lights out" areas and plans to install sensors that switch lights off automatically. Datamail has just opened a 4.5 star- rated building in Auckland.
"It's about accountability, ownership and responsibility, considering: if it was your house [or country], would you do this?"
Government support for sustainability includes the Ministry for the Environment's online A How To Guide: Make You and Your Workplace More Environmentally Sustainable. The guide suggests a range of ways people can improve the sustainability of their daily activities.
