“ NZ - a friend to Middle Earth but no friend of the earth ”

I read with horror a piece in the NZ Herald last week referring to an article in the Guardian (one of England's leading newspapers), about New Zealand's fast growing carbon emissions. The title of the article was "New Zealand was a friend to Middle Earth but its no friend of the earth". Yikes! That’s fairly damning.

Ahead of Copenhagen the article compares the performance of a number of developed nations in meeting their Kyoto commitments and puts NZ ahead of even USA and Australia in terms of our shocking performance. I quote "...prize for the most shameless two fingers to the global community goes to New Zealand, a country that sells itself around the world as 'clean and green' ".

The latest statistics from the UN show our emissions are up by 22% on the Kyoto base year of 1990 and an eye popping 39% growth in burning fuel. This is primarily from private vehicle use.

In contrast to this, I am incredibly proud to say that Westpac has done the complete opposite. We've reduced our carbon emissions by 26% in 12 months (our carbon accounting period is Jun 08 - Jun 09). We’ve done this by adopting sensible energy management practices, changing our car fleet, reducing our air travel and by encouraging all of our staff to adopt simple practices like switching off lights and pcs at night. Special mention needs to go to the fantastic work done by our Properties and Sourcing teams. We’ve done this without the need of regulatory framework because it’s the right thing to do and it just makes good business sense. By reducing our raw materials we’re keeping a lid on our expenses. See our Reducing Carbon Emissions page on the website for more information.

In the lead up to Copenhagen and Christmas I encourage you to create a New Year's resolution to save power and drive your car less. If all New Zealand individuals and businesses did this we might just be able to save our 'clean and green' brand from further reputation damage.