New Zealand Engineering 1999 June

Engineering Office

Eco-Efficiency for New Zealand

Current environmental policies are unlikely to be sufficient to cope with the environmental challenges of the next century.

This is not my assertion but that of the OECD Environment Ministers who met in February 1996 to review environmental progress in member countries. The Ministers concluded that although pollution had been reduced over the last 25 years, further effort is needed to address global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss. These challenges require quite fundamental changes to the way we do business, live our lives and govern ourselves.

There have been many initiatives in recent years to help address global environmental challenges. An important one, that is attracting increasing attention, involves a range of policies and practices aimed at improving the efficiency with which ecological resources are used to meet human needs. It can most simply be described as endeavouring to get more from less for longer. Dramatically improving the efficiency with which society converts natural resources into goods and services is an important step towards the necessary decoupling of the quantity of resources used from the maintenance of quality of life in our societies. If we are to maintain and enhance current lifestyles we eventually have to do so from much smaller amounts of non-renewable resources - current technologies could produce substantive reductions if policy and market conditions allowed. A frequent constraint is the undervaluing of natural resources - the market does not recognise (or pay for) their ecological worth.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) explains eco-efficiency goals at the business level as:

"Eco-efficiency is reached by the delivery of competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while progressively reducing ecological impacts and resource intensity throughout the life cycle, to a level at least in line with the earth’s estimated carrying capacity."

Carrying capacity is not a fixed attribute being a product of natural limitations but also influenced by innovation and new technologies. The most pressing needs for New Zealand are likely to be improving the efficiency of materials used in manufacturing goods, reducing waste and improving the efficiency of energy use by households, transport and businesses.

There are two major reasons to strive to deliver more to society from fewer resources. The first is to reduce the impacts of extraction and processing. This can apply to a great variety of activities: coal mining, gravel extraction, forest harvesting and aspects of agriculture, eg. tillage practices. The second is to minimise waste generation in the use of any resource - which includes minimising emissions. While an eco-efficiency focus during extraction and utilisation seems a fairly obvious thing to be doing, it is frequently not the prime focus. The pricing of resources, or wastes, may mitigate against more efficient use; a current example being petroleum products which are at historically low prices and being supplied via a very competitive market in New Zealand.

New partnerships

If eco-efficiency is to be taken seriously in New Zealand, new partnerships need to be forged between businesses, governments, and consumers. The OECD has studied numerous initiatives to improve eco-efficiency at the business and community level. Manufacturers have found profitable ways to reduce their use of materials, energy and water per unit of production by 10 to 40 percent.

The global company Electrolux has been working since 1992 to make production of their whiteware and other products more efficient, to reduce the use of energy and water and to recycle used material. In one of their key product areas, the products with the best environmental performance accounted for 10 per cent of sales and as much as 15 per cent of profit.

Partnerships between businesses and government to initiate and implement strategies to improve eco-efficiency are starting to occur in New Zealand but more needs to be done. The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority has played an important role in assisting companies to improve their energy efficiency through a number of programmes, eg. the energy-wise companies programme. Some waste management initiatives have occurred (eg. the Zero Waste NZ network based in Auckland supported by the Tindall Foundation) while others have not survived (eg. waste oil reprocessing).

One partnership has resulted in Waitakere City Council producing a guide for new home builders entitled Sustainable Home Guidelines. A number of organisations including the Ministry for the Environment, the Building Research Association of NZ, the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority as well as a number of individuals, companies and councils assisted Waitakere City Council in producing this guideline. The guideline has sections on sustainable design, energy, water and materials. Much of the information is about everyday things that householders can do to contribute to sustainability - saving energy or water, making a home safer and healthier or just more comfortable to live in.

The reason for focusing on efficient use of materials, energy and water is to reduce environmental impacts, maintain desired qualities of life and to increase business’ and our nation’s competitiveness.

Dr J Morgan Williams, Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment