By Amy Earles
Breaking news:
Despite Sustainability Options’ home visits increasing by 19% since the last financial year, we have decreased our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 8%!
Despite our commitment to environmental sustainability, to leaving a more harmonious world for our grandchildren’s grandchildren, for a while we weren’t measuring our impacts on the environment through our activity. After receiving support from BayTrust to measure our organisational carbon footprint, we have been collecting and analysing our GHG emissions since I joined the team in 2023. What has followed has been a continuous journey of improving our data collection process, increasing the efficiency and accuracy of the information we collect and listening to our kaimahi (people) throughout this process.
Although I studied a Bachelor of Science (Environmental Sciences) at university, the process of carbon footprint data collection and reporting was all new to me. I had been bought into the team to manage an area of the business that I was learning about as I went. That first year of data collection and reporting was time consuming because I joined Sustainability Options towards the end of the financial year, so I had to filter through trying to source almost a year of information in a short space of time! I’d like to thank Wymond Symes and his team at Tadpole for helping us start our data collection journey.
Our biggest operational challenge has been related to transport, particularly the regular travel by our assessors and repairs and maintenance team members in visiting homes throughout the Bay of Plenty region. We strive to provide an accessible service to the community, visiting all the homes that we can, to improve the health of homes and individuals. Our main question has been ‘how can we reduce our total GHG emissions each financial year, while we increase the scope of our reach and thus the number of homes we visit?’
During the 2026 financial year, we achieved this goal. This was through a combination of:
Having one less work vehicle on the road due to a change in internal team roles
More streamlined home visits - more efficient scheduling reduced the number of different visits to homes
A reduction in business travel emissions by choosing to drive to conferences and other events instead of flying, where possible
The carbon footprint reporting process has made our team consider how we can do business differently. It has created discussion around internal roles within the team and delivering more interventions during initial home assessments rather than on follow up visits. We have been reflecting on how individual team members can contribute to our commitment to reducing our GHG emissions. We realise that change as a team must start with changes from individuals.
And this has been happening! To recognise employee behaviour change in regards to commuting, we also collect information and report on ‘avoided emissions’. These are instances where single car occupancy is not used to commute to and from the office and to meetings during the day. Because some of our staff have been choosing to cycle, walk, scooter, take the bus, run and carpool, 4.63 less tonnes of GHG emissions were released into the atmosphere last financial year. How cool! Special shoutout to Nik for frequently running to work, Rachel S and Caitlin for carpooling during their shared lengthy commute during the year and to Jo, Mel and Jessie for utilising available Ebikes and choosing to cycle.
As we look ahead to the future, we want to continue our momentum in our pursuit of environmental sustainability, in continuing to reduce our emissions each year. Our focus for the current financial year is to reach out to our team and make them aware of their individual carbon footprints and how these have changed over the years, while also continuing to streamline our home visits process. We are still far from where we’d ideally like to be, but with a team of compassionate, hardworking individuals, we know that together we have the potential to achieve great things.
