About carboNZeroCertTM
Managed by Landcare Research New Zealand, carboNZeroCertTM certification aims to help organisations manage their carbon footprint. In order to achieve certification through the carboNZeroCertTM program, we needed to measure, manage, mitigate and verify our emissions associated with our company and certified products.
How do we go about this?
Emissions are measured by collating data on the ground – what is measured?
- Diesel
- Petrol
- Electricity
- Freight
- Frost protection
- Domestic and International Travel
- Grower’s Fruit
- Fertilisers
- Agrochemicals
- Packaging Manufacture
- Packaging Transport
- Waste
- And more!!!
For the financial year 2009 this equated to 734t CO2e (net of electricity that is already offset) offset via the purchase of credits generated by a windfarm in New Zealand. Given our history in carbon neutrality we have the benefit of tracking our emissions. The following graph shows how our emissions have tracked over the last four years:
Why such an increase from 2006 to 2007 - the scope of which we had to measure our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions changed and therefore we had a much greater footprint. You will notice that it has since levelled off to around 800t CO2e.
Why do we track emissions gross and net of refrigerant losses – this is because these losses are greatly out of our control, but at the same time can have a significant on our footprint, therefore it is necessary to monitor our emissions with and without this influence.
Annual certification requires the implementation of an emissions reduction and management plan signed off by the Chairman of the Board.
Major projects:
- Wood boiler, using wood out of on-site woodlot, to provide heat for sterilisation of bottling line,
- Continuous bottle lightweighting,
- Use of skype to minimise travel associated with management meetings,
- Exploring opportunities around biochar as a method of carbon sequestration,
- New warehousing project will incorporate solar/wind power, alternative building materials, use of rainwater and passive cooling.
Annually we have to offset the unavoidable residual emissions associated with our business. For our first three certifications we bought credits generated by reforestation projects, and our latest certification was offset by windfarm credits.
Annually our emissions inventory report, subsequent carbon footprint and use of the carboNZeroCertTM logo and terminology are independently audited by a third party. This process assures accountability, transparency, accuracy and integrity of what we are reporting and the end result of carbon neutrality.