Business Canterbury and our Toitū accreditation journey

Business Canterbury is proud to have recently achieved Toitū net carbon zero status. Attaining this accreditation forms part of our ongoing commitment to reduce our own carbon footprint and support our members as they embark on their sustainability journeys.

General Manager Petra Oldfield says: “there’s no question it was the right thing to do”.
“As we move to a carbon efficient economy, our goal is to support and add value to Canterbury businesses, helping them see that that there is business value in managing and reducing carbon emissions. We’ve heard a lot of people say it’s too hard, so we wanted to show leadership and demonstrate that with the right tools and robust certification processes, the journey to sustainability doesn’t need to be a daunting one.”

In 2022, Business Canterbury made the commitment to become carbon-zero in a year and – along with our contemporaries in the BusinessNZ Network – chose Toitū to help us on this journey. But before we could come up with a carbon reduction plan and improve our operations, we had to ask ourselves: what is our footprint?

Petra says initially that wasn’t an easy question to answer. “The biggest thing we underestimated was the data collection process due to the level of detail required. It was a significant time investment, and we were very mindful of needing to make it easy for our team to contribute and comply, without taking too much time away from their important work supporting local businesses.”

Business Canterbury has been supported through this process by energy efficiency and sustainability consultants DETA who have also run a free seminar for members who were interested in starting their own sustainability journey. We have also been working with GreenHalo, an automated and intuitive carbon accounting platform, to help streamline the data collection process and make it easier for other New Zealand businesses. 

GreenHalo is a Canterbury start-up, and its parent company Ember Technology has been a long-term member of Business Canterbury.  We have provided mutual support over the past year and, while we were preparing for our own Toitū Envirocare audit, GreenHalo launched to market.  It now has Canterbury customers such ANZCO Foods, Alliance, Venues Ōtautahi, Waitaki Biosciences and BMS Risk.

“Things we’ve learnt have changed how we operate and we’re already seeing the benefits,” says Petra. “For us, the three main carbon contributors were flights, transport and electricity, so we’ve worked to reduce our carbon impact through a variety of travel-reducing initiatives including video conferencing, waste reduction initiatives including recycling and composting, and energy-reducing initiatives such as procuring low energy use products. We’ve also used offsetting in accordance with international standards to secure our net zero status.”

This partnership is just one of the ways we are helping our many member businesses aiming to achieve net zero status themselves. We also offer a series of learning and development opportunities for other Canterbury businesses, including our upcoming Waste Minimisation workshop.