Our environmental performance - a mirror of what we say
There is increasing awareness that what makes good environmental sense can also make good business sense. There are financial benefits to be gained from reducing resource use and minimising waste and associated clean-up costs. However, there are impediments to good environmental stewardship that often result in unnecessary waste and increased costs. Sometimes organisations just do not know how or where the waste occurs. Manaaki Whenua has achieved ISO 14001 certification for its environmental management systems and offers help to other businesses wishing to improve their environmental performance.
As an organisation whose core business is research into sustainable development, we work with many businesses and councils to help them reduce their “ecological footprint”, that is their level of resource use and waste production. In addition to strategic advice, we have developed a suite of tools that help measure and manage activities. These include certification programmes such as Enviro-Mark®NZ, an environmental management system that helps a business monitor, improve and demonstrate environmental stewardship to customers and other interested parties; and requires and encourages ongoing commitment to continually improve environmental practices. Within Manaaki Whenua we use the synergy between these tools to assist our own environmental performance, such as offsetting emissions through EBEX21®, which includes the management tools CarboNZero® and E-Manage. When the opportunity arises we also use our own internal actions, and assets such as our “green” building in Auckland, to assist in our research. One fundamental requirement to reducing the environmental footprint of our activities is to monitor our performance and use that information to adjust our management practices.
Energy use
Energy use is a key consideration for most businesses. Reducing demand for energy has multiple benefits in terms of direct cost savings and reduced need for infrastructure development, as well as to the environment as a whole. Manaaki Whenua continues to monitor energy use associated with running our sites, and we are implementing strategies to reduce consumption. Despite these efforts, however, our electricity use has increased by 4% and total energy use (from electricity, gas, and coal) has increased slightly from 2004/05. A 16% increase in electricity use at our Auckland site is attributed to a change (in late 2004/05) to weekend use of the facilities by our major tenants, who occupy nearly 30% of the building’s floor area. However, there is an overall benefit, as the additional use of the building at weekends means better use of the initial investment in the resources which contributed to it, a key component of sustainability. A small increase in electricity use at our Lincoln site can be attributed to a modest increase in use by our insect quarantine facility (this complex uses almost a third of the site’s electricity), and construction of an extension to an existing building.
Several measures were introduced to help reduce energy consumption. The building extension at Lincoln has energy-efficient features including double-glazing and extra-thick insulation (the level of insulation is significantly above EECA’s recommended best practice). We also installed a solar hot water system to supplement hot water supply to a neighbouring building, and a data logger to monitor it. We are also using current transducers to monitor energy uses of some Lincoln facilities. In Auckland we installed energy-efficient LED corridor lighting, similar to that previously installed at Lincoln.
Achieving zero net emissions
This year for the first time we achieved zero net emissions from our research activities. Each year, we calculate the quantity of CO2 emitted from our air travel, motor vehicle travel, and use of reticulated gas, electricity and coal. This year emissions increased by 6%, largely due to increases in international and domestic air travel.
We have a long-term commitment to decrease the amount of energy and fossil fuels we use, and offsetting the emissions that we cannot reduce through the purchase of CO2 units through EBEX21®. This year we have, for the first time, offset 100% of the CO2 emissions associated with our travel and energy use. In 2005/06, we purchased EBEX21® Carbon Credits from an additional 300 ha at Hinewai Reserve and Queen Charlotte Wilderness Park to give a total offset of 1800 tonnes CO2 which exceeds our net emissions.
CO2
Travel
International air travel increased by 18% from that in 2004/05 and continues an upward trend (see following graph). Increased travel by science staff attending overseas conferences and for research contracts has largely contributed to this. Domestic air travel has increased by 10% from that in 2004/05. This is despite extensive use of videoconferencing facilities.
Vehicle travel mileage continues to decline. Also, we continue to have a small number of hybrid vehicles in our fl eet. We have a new leased hybrid-fuel vehicle (a Toyota Prius) at Lincoln, and have retained our two hybrid fuel-electric Honda Civic vehicles at Lincoln and Auckland. The Honda Civic has been the second-most used vehicle at Lincoln this past year.
We also lease a Smart car, which is used for Enviro-Mark®NZ work (see photo). Overall fuel consumption of fl eet vehicles has declined at the same rate as mileage of those vehicles (although there are differences between sites). In 2006/07 we will monitor fuel efficiency of each vehicle more closely so that staff and managers can be told of the comparative environmental impacts, and to help in the choice of fuel-efficient alternatives when obtaining fleet vehicles. While our voluntary sustainability groups have not actively promoted car pools and public transport to encourage staff to travel to work in more sustainable ways in the past year, staff at Hamilton and Lincoln actively promoted and participated in the Business Battle for cyclists during Bike Week in February/ March 2006.
Videoconference facilities
Extensive use has been made of videoconference facilities now installed at six of our eight sites. In 2005/06 442 calls were made (an average of 37 per month) between 2307 staff (an average of 5 per call). The average length of call was just over an hour. While many of those calls would have otherwise used teleconference calls, user logs indicate that 145 return air flights were avoided by the availability of videoconferencing. If these flights were made (assuming each was a return flight between Christchurch and Palmerston North), this would have increased the total domestic air mileage by 6.5%, and our carbon emissions by 1.4%.
Waste minimisation
Manaaki Whenua has a target of zero waste to landfill by 2010. At all sites we monitor and encourage recycling of paper, and at most sites we separate glass and other recyclables for collection. At Lincoln and Palmerston North we also compost organic waste. We conducted a waste audit at our Palmerston North site in June 2005. One outcome is that we now send paper towel waste to the local composting facility at Massey University. Our overall paper use has continued to decline, and was 14% lower than in 2004/05. We make extensive use of our intranet to obviate the need for paper forms, manuals, newsletters and notices.
Monitoring the performance of our Auckland building
Our Auckland building uses good environmental design to contain energy use and municipal water consumption. We have continued to evaluate the actual performance against the design specification. The original design target for annual energy use of the building was 100 kWh/m2, much lower than a conventional building with similar research laboratories, which would use about 300 kWh/m2. This year we installed power meters so we could distinguish the electricity consumption of site glasshouses from consumption of the whole site. We were therefore able to calculate that the electricity consumption of the building alone was 166 kWh/m2 during 2005/06. The total energy consumption of the building during 2005/06, including consumption of natural gas, was 183 kWh/m2. Although this was significantly above the design target, it is clearly still much lower than a conventional building.
The design target for energy consumption assumed a 5-day-a-week operation, but our major tenant now requires a laboratory (and by consequence the full mechanical plant) to be fully operational during normal business hours for 7 days a week. This contributed to the 16% rise in electricity consumption. Hence the design target for the building has been adjusted to 140 kWh/m2/year. However, the energy consumption is still 28% above this target. It is expected that refinement of the building management system, combined with gradual upgrading of equipment within the building – computer monitors and freezers in particular – will lead to a close fit with the revised target over the next 3 years.
The building’s water consumption is remarkably low. With little or no mains water used in the toilets, urinals and glasshouses, the overall mains water consumption is considerably reduced. Mains water consumption for the building and the greenhouses in the 2005/06 financial year was 0.176 m3/m2 (or 10.5 m3 per person). This was higher than for the 2004/05 year, but the water consumption at Manaaki Whenua’s Palmerston North site, which also has laboratories and is of similar size, was 20.1 m3 per person during 2005/06.
Water consumption data for laboratories are not generally available for New Zealand, so an appropriate benchmark may be with a commercial office building. The recently produced National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS) scores the environmental performance of commercial office buildings in a range of areas, including water consumption, and can serve as a benchmark of performance. The NABERS value for an average commercial building is 1.2 m3/ m2/year. The top NABERS score (five stars) is awarded for water consumption of 0.2 m3/ m2/year, higher than the consumption at the Auckland building.
The building uses 85% less mains water than an average commercial building. This is in spite of the presence of laboratories and greenhouses, both high consumers of water. By way of further comparison, the average annual consumption for a residential house in the Auckland Region is 63 m3 per person6. Therefore the water consumption of the whole Manaaki Whenua building is the equivalent of four three-person Auckland houses.
6 Auckland water resources quantity statement Bannister R, Crowcroft G, Johnston A. Dec 2004. Auckland Regional Council Technical Publication
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