People starting their sustainability journey arrive confused, concerned and overwhelmed says DETA Managing Director, Jono Pooch.
“They are daunted by the size of the challenge and don’t know where to start,” Pooch explains. “They are worried about green washing and the risk of doing the wrong thing. Mostly the glass is half empty and there’s very little discussion about opportunity.”
DETA is a team of 50 passionate engineers and project managers who are on a mission to help remove two million tons of carbon out of the atmosphere as quickly as possible. The sustainability consultancy has grown to four offices across New Zealand and Australia in 12 years. They work with corporates such as ANZCO Foods and Alliance and smaller businesses such as Waitaki Biosciences.
The Gap-Analysis Approach Is So Simple
What’s your current carbon footprint? What’s your future target? What are the steps to get there? This gap-analysis approach provides a simple working framework. “You need to be comfortable with a level of vulnerability about your current state. If you aren’t open to that, it’s more difficult to move forward,” says Pooch.
Step 1: Measure Your Current Carbon Footprint
DETA or other providers can help measure your current footprint. “This is also where GreenHalo helps,” Pooch explains. “You need to know the size of the individual areas where your business emits carbon. These can include electricity, air travel, freight, waste and potentially many other areas”.
Step 2: Determine Your Future Target
To set your target, you need to consider how you reduce your big carbon emission sources, a term referred to as ‘materiality’. What’s going to make the biggest difference? This is where some advice from the experts might save you time and money later.
Step 3: The Plan
Align your plan to your business strategy. According to Pooch, “Ideally, the plan isn’t something you add on to a business. It becomes how you operate. Utopia is that everyone in the business is a sustainability manager.”
With your owners or exec team singing off the same song sheet, you simply break the target down to small steps in an overall programme of work. Then the best way to make a difference and learn is to get started!
Opportunities & Pitfalls
Pooch explains that they very rarely do environmental projects by themselves. “We approach them as business improvement projects. You look at things like reliability, resilience and how they affect people. Every project has an environmental element but also other benefits such as economic, product quality, automation, minimising supply chain risk, reducing downtime and H&S”.
Pooch believes unclear future aspiration is a common pitfall. He also says that some businesses say they’re awesome and can set themselves up for criticism. “You need to be a bit humble. And business owners sometimes tackle areas that are important to them but not what’s going to make the biggest difference. They can get caught out by their customers with accusations of green washing.”
According to Pooch, everyone is on a sustainability journey. It doesn’t matter when your starting point is. You just need to start today.
Chris Bailey
GreenHalo Founder
GreenHalo’s mission is to praise, support and grow a community of Green Angels. We’re proud to showcase DETA and thank Jono Pooch, who helped shape GreenHalo at no cost.
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