Source: Auckland Council
More than 45,000 people are already using Auckland Council’s FutureFit tool to measure and reduce their personal carbon footprint.
To date, they’ve saved the carbon equivalent of 13,600 car trips from Auckland to Wellington by making simple adjustments to their habits.
Businesses are using the Future Fit tool to help staff reduce emissions – a commitment made by members of the Climate Leaders Coalition. Spark New Zealand and New Zealand Post are inspiring their teams to explore sustainability through the FutureFit in Business offering, with ASB recently joining as the newest corporate member. Eke Panuku, Tasman District Council and Kapiti Coast District Council are also engaging their residents to get future fit, with more businesses and councils in the pipeline.
Tom Newitt, Sustainability Lead at Spark, says FutureFit has been key in engaging people with sustainability.
“We encouraged our people to join through a four-week challenge where they could compete for individual and team prizes.
“We linked to this our own Spark Environmental Policy, which sets out Spark’s expectations for our people to consider environmental impacts when making decisions at work, including examining our business practices, understanding their impacts, and taking reasonable steps to reduce Spark’s environmental footprint.”
NZ Post motivates their teams
Creating a low carbon culture is one of the four focus areas of NZ Post’s ambitious science-based carbon reduction plan and part of their commitment to meet the higher pledge as a member of the Climate Leaders Coalition.
“FutureFit is key to achieving a high level of awareness amongst our people of their personal carbon footprint and what they can do to reduce it,” explains NZ Post Group Sustainability Manager Dawn Baggaley.
“It was easy to implement with ready to go communications collateral that was simple to tailor for our people. The six different bimonthly themes provide staff the opportunity to reduce their footprint in different ways. Most importantly, FutureFit reports on the reductions [in emissions] our people are making in their lives – motivating them to do more,” says Dawn.
ASB joins FutureFit
The latest recruit to the FutureFit family is ASB Bank, which signed up to the service just last month.
ASB Head of Corporate Responsibility Miranda James says building a sustainability-aware culture is a key part of the bank’s climate change strategy – and FutureFit delivers the right mix of inspiration and information.
“ASB is committed to working toward a more sustainable future. We’re doing this by increasingly supporting our customers with their climate change and sustainability goals and by enabling our team through initiatives like Future Fit. Small actions add up and can help shape bigger changes.
“FutureFit is dynamic and engaging, and it’s backed up with high-quality resources. We have ambitious targets to reduce ASB’s carbon footprint andFutureFit going to help us get there by empowering our people to make a difference at home and at work. We’re looking forward to rolling it out and getting started.”
FutureFit also provides a range of free resources for small businesses.
Easy changes for a big impact
Making changes doesn’t need to be hard. Simple things like biking, carpooling or skipping your commute and working from home could save a huge amount of carbon. FutureFit users have saved 1,817,000 kg of carbon together by taking these simple actions.
Within Auckland, 82 per cent of people say they are willing to change their lifestyle to meet our climate commitments. However, many are not sure where to start to have the greatest impact.
The most popular actions FutureFit users have completed to have a lighter carbon footprint are:
- Skip using the clothes dryer and use a clothesline outside, collectively FutureFit users have saved over 3000 kg of CO2e.
- Make a weekly meal plan and only buy what you need, collectively FutureFit users have saved over 11,000 kg of CO2e.
- Big carbon savings – Have a meat free day, collectively FutureFit users have saved over 41,000 kg of CO2e.
It’s easy to see which actions have the biggest potential for carbon reductions, and you can choose what suits your lifestyle.
If just 10 per cent of New Zealanders actively used FutureFit, we could collectively save 300,000 tonnes of carbon. That’s like driving from Auckland to Wellington over 2 million times!
What are you waiting for? Get FutureFit.
