This Climate Business

The Chia Sisters is the kind of food company we dream of in New Zealand. Lovingly created by a family business and bottled in a solar-powered factory, this healthy energy drink is delicious, premium, and wholly sourced from local ingredients. The company is certified carbon positive, pays its workers a living wage, and is a founding member of Future Foods Aotearoa, a network of pioneering food com...

Last Sunday a remarkable thing happened. Along with 2000 of my best friends I rode over the Auckland harbour bridge on my bicycle. I was surpirsed how gentle the gradient was and how pitted the tar-seal surface is. The views are some of the best in Auckland. The really surprising thing though is that were doing it all. The last time someone rode over the bridge is 12 years ago – also a protest at...

Transport represents almost half of CO2 emisisons in NZ. In Auckland, its higher, at 67%. After agriculture with our burbing cows, transport is the most imporant sector to decarbonise. Yet the just published 10-year plan for Auckland predicts a 6% increase in emissions by 2031. Critics have called the plan ‘baffling’ – at odds with the council’s commitment to halve emissions by 2030. The report is...

Dr Sean Weaver, CEO and founder of Ekos, is a pioneer in using carbon credits to fund indigenous forests, at scale. Which is handy, because we need them. The Climate Change Commission says we need fewer cows and many thousands of hectares of trees, exotic and native. Carbon farming appears to provide an effective mechanism to get there. Landowners plant trees on what was once pasture and sell carb...

This week Vincent talks to the indefatigable Glen Herud, dairy pioneer and founder of the Happy Cow Milk Company – where cows keep their young, the calves are not sent to slaughter and the milking shed is mobile, that is, it goes to cows rather than cows coming to the shed. Hard at it since 2006, Glen faced technical, political and financial hurdles to get Happy Cow launched. Now on the cusp of it...

Where there’s muck there’s brass. In this episode Vincent talk to two entrepreneurs using technology to address waste problems at source. Oliver Hunt is co-founder of Medsalv, which cleans and refurbishes single-use hospital equipment. And Toby Skilton is co-founder of Mutu, an online exchange for sharing and hiring household gear. Especially trailers! Both are recent startups, both deploy tech to...

This week Vincent attended the launch of O Tātou Ngāhere , a joint venture between Tāne’s Tree Trust and business lobby group Pure Advantage. They’re calling for a major shift in thinking about native forests, arguing that it’s not just the job of government but of farmers, landowners and all New Zealanders to plant and nurture native trees. They have a target of 2 million hectares of new native f...

Climate change sucks, but there are some upsides. Electric skateboards being one. E-scooters being the other. In fact the whole micromobility revolution is so much fun. And no one is having more fun than Oliver Bruce, the ex-Uber exec who has returned to NZ to become an angel investor and agitator for micromobility in our cities. Oliver is the co-founder of the Micromobility.io – a conference, pod...

As the co-leader of the NZ Greens and the minister for Climate Change, James Shaw has defied his critics to get climate change on the government agenda with the overhaul of the Emissions Trading Scheme, cross-party support for the Zero Carbon Act, and the creation of the Climate Change Commission who’s daft report has just been published. All wins for sure but wins that feel about a decade too old...

The NZ Climate Change Commission released its landmark report late January. The 650-page discussion document sets an agenda for how New Zealand could achieve GHG emissions reductions to align with our international obligations, such as the Paris Agreement, and achieve the goal of being carbon neutral by 2050. It’s a big document, with lots to say and implications that some say are as radical as th...

Welcome to Climate Briefs, the summer series for This Climate Business. I ask a simple question, our experts give a succinct answer. Because in the end everyone likes a tight brief, right? This week I ask Rohan MacMahon about Project Drawdown, most comprehensive list of greenhouse gas reductions projects, from peat farming and poo fuel to photosynthetic paint and synthetic cows. >> The World's Lea...

Welcome to Climate Briefs, the summer series for This Climate Business. I ask a simple question, our experts give a succinct answer. Because in the end everyone likes a tight brief, right? This week I ask Jo Spratt of Oxfam NZ to explain climate justice. Not everyone will experience the consequences of climate crisis in equal measure. The most vulnerable are typically the already most disadvantage...

Welcome to Climate Briefs, the summer series for This Climate Business. I ask a simple question, our experts give a succinct answer. Because in the end everyone likes a tight brief, right? This week I ask Eloise Gibson, climate change editor of Stuff, to explain the role of methane in global heating, why it’s such a contended topic and whether emitting gas through mammalian orifices will ever be a...

Welcome to Climate Briefs, the summer series for This Climate Business. I ask a simple question, our experts give a succinct answer. Because in the end everyone likes a tight brief, right? This week I ask Alex Johnston of Oxfam NZ to explain climate finance – the arcane world of country-by-country commitments to fund the transition to a low-carbon world. Who sets these sums, who pays and who ensur...

Welcome to Climate Briefs, the summer series for This Climate Business. I ask a simple question, our experts give a succinct answer. Because in the end everyone likes a tight brief, right? This week I ask Barry Coates of Mindful Money to explain shareholder activism and how it is checking the behaviour of polluting and unethical companies.

The Auckland Climate Plan sets a target of reducing GHG emissions by half by 2030. Now, we know that largest single chunk of Auckland’s emissions – that’s 37% - comes from land transport. So to achieve that bold target, transport emissions need to fall by  a massive 64% - in just 10 years. That puts Shane Ellison in the hot seat. Shane is the chief executive of Auckland Transport, the council-owne...

Last week Prime Minister Jacinda Adern declared a Climate Emergency. In Parliament she said: “This declaration is an acknowledgement of the next generation … of the burden that they will carry if we do not get this right and do not take action now.”  The declaration has been a long time coming and follows the example of many other countries and cities, including some in NZ. So what is a climate em...

 Starting with replacing those awful one-use plastic courier bags, the company now offers alternatives to plastic gloves, gift wrap, sticky labels and bags of all sort and is exporting its plant-based products in Australia, Europe, China and USA. But what does compostable mean, is it the same as biodegradable what happens when you don’t have a compost bin – and does plant-based plastic just replac...

More women than men choose ethical investments. Why? John Berry is the founder and CEO of Pathfinder Asset Management, an investment fund and manager of Caresaver, an ethical Kiwsaver plan launched last year. Pathfinder believes that doing good pays better bucks. That is, investors who consider the environmental, social and governance impact of their investments can improve returns not just for th...

With a mandate to rule and all the tools in place, this Labour government has everything it needs reduce New Zealand’s emissions. So, what’s the hold up? Patience child warns Russel executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa, a former Green party co-leader and two term MP. The seasoned campaigner says we need to give Team Ardern six months to demonstrate how it will turn NZ’s emissions around -- th...

Every year New Zealand food industry sends 103,000 tonnes of food waste to landfill. Some 60% of that food going to landfill is edible. Burying food (often in its plastic and foil packaging) is an environmental disaster. It needlessly contributes to greenhouse gas emissions – and squanders the resources used to produce and transport that food, including water, land, energy, labour, and capital. If...

Are you sick of owning an expensive, polluting metal box called a car? Me too. Mine sits in the garage taking up real estate and costing me bomb in maintenance and registeration. Is car sharing a better alternative? The idea is simple: use an app to pick up one of the share cars dotted around your city, do your thing, park it and walk away. Voila! Maybe. Car-sharing has a long and painful history....

Few names have been associated longer with conservation and environmental protest than Gary Taylor. The executive director of the Environmental Defence Society has taken on mining companies, property tycoons, governments and even fellow conservationists with the cool-headed grit of a long-haul trucker. So what does he make of Labour’s extraordinary mandate to rule? What’s on his wishlist for actio...

Here’s a surprise for you. It’s possible that sheep and beef farms could already be net carbon neutral in NZ. According to a new report, sheep and beef farms hold 17% of NZ’s forests - or more technically 17% of NZ’s woody vegetation. On the most generous estimates, that vegetation could be sequestering more GHGs than what all our dry-stock herds are emitting. Even at the least generous estimate t...

Craigmore Sustainables is the only New Zealand land manager that operates at scale in each of New Zealand’s three core primary sectors: horticulture, dairy farming and forestry. It also claims to be a leader in sustainable practices, seeking to become carbon neutral in some of its dairy and kiwifruit operations, employing local owner/operators and finding innovative ways to reduce environmental im...