Highlights from EECA’s sustainability report

For the year ended 30 June 2006

The 2005/06 EECA Sustainability Report focuses on the continued importance of sustainability within our internal operations. This is the fourth year that EECA has reported on the health of the organisation from a triple bottom line perspective, incorporating environmental, social and economic aspects.

The full sustainability report details our performance for 2005/06 and future commitments for the 2006/07 year.

EECA’s sustainability reporting reflects on the following key targets:

• Showing leadership in minimising environmental effects arising from operations;
• Attracting and retaining high calibre staff by operating a highly effective and positive team culture;
• Being responsive to stakeholders and providing technical excellence; and
• Being fiscally responsible.

 

With this being our fourth report, we are able to provide comparative data over reporting periods, highlighting trends and in many cases improvements in our performance.

Significant achievements

EECA has incorporated previous years' targets into our standard practices, demonstrating continuous improvement.

EECA has continued to grow its level of involvement with the Govt3 programme, which commits us to developing and implementing an action plan on key sustainable practices. Our participation in the Govt3 programme has included assisting other participants in improving their energy performance, as well as improving EECA’s own sustainable procurement practices.

This year EECA took a new approach to collecting and evaluating stakeholder feedback, with the three surveys (stakeholder, leadership and staff culture) managed by one provider. The objective of this combined survey method was to provide an integrated approach to assessing the linkages between leadership, organisational culture, and stakeholder perceptions. The new survey approach marks significant progress in the identification of key areas for improvement in EECA’s performance.

Other areas of significant achievement include:

• Achievement of a 66% reduction in waste sent to landfill from 2003/04. This was a result of reducing the size of office waste bins, encouraging more recycling, and implementing an organic collection scheme in the Wellington office.
• A further uptake of our travel plan aimed at encouraging staff to make sustainable transport choices, both for commuting and for business related travel. Specific results are detailed within the travel section of the report.

 

2005/06 Sustainability Performance

Our greatest successes in 2005/06 have arisen from staff-driven initiatives. Over the year EECA achieved or partially achieved 24 of 28 identified actions. In particular we are proud of our performance in the areas of waste reduction. Our staff have effectively responded to the sustainability challenges identified in the previous reports.

Moving Forward

Each year we intend to maintain or improve our programme across key target areas such as energy, waste, and stakeholder engagement and satisfaction.

Target areas for next year are:

• Maintaining or improving office energy use levels;
• Maximising sustainability opportunities from the review of the Wellington office accommodation;
• Further investigating travel impacts;
• Acting on opportunities for improvement in waste minimisation initiatives identified during the waste audit;
• Improving average weighted scores across all stakeholder surveys – external, staff and leadership.