Urgent Couriers, The New Zealand Merino Company and IAG were among the winners at the inaugural Sustainable 60 Awards in Auckland on Wednesday night. The awards, the brainchild of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Fairfax Media, aim to raise awareness of sustainability, and redefine sustainability as being more than just 'going green'. The awards attracted more than 110 individual entries across five categories, with Urgent Couriers and The New Zealand Merino Company jointly winning the overall award for medium sized firms. Urgent Couriers has gone carbon neutral and has also addressed the industry's sustainability. With competition pushing prices down, courier drivers, who work as contractors, were no longer earning a liveable wage. Urgent Couriers made a decision to raise wages and is helping drivers to better manage their businesses. "We were being, as an industry, pretty irresponsible by just paying them everything they earnt and expecting them to deal with it. So we put in place some pretty rigorous training processes and then the ability for them to save tax with us so when tax time came it wasn't a problem," says Urgent Couriers managing director Steve Bonnici. The New Zealand Merino Company has been credited with helping the fine-wool industry extricate itself from the boom and bust of the commodity cycle by founding a brand that relies on traceability. Chief executive John Brakenridge says it is no longer good enough to claim sustainable practices, companies have to prove it. "People are wanting to know more and more about where the products come from. We have a programme called Zque that goes in and identifies not only about some of the on-farm practices around animal welfare, not only around social responsibility which is the linking in of contracts, but links in the whole supply chain," he says. Locus research, a design and development company of just seven employees, took out the small business category. It focuses on designing sustainable products, but it is also endeavouring to educate others, producing a how-to booklet on sustainable design. "Our office and the impact of our office is quite small in comparison to the people that we work for. If we make one change and if some of the other people in design community make changes, that actually has a quite a significant downstream impact," says Locus Reserach managing director Timothy Allan. The big business category award went to IAG, which owns State and NZI Insurance. Its initiatives include tailoring insurance policies to reward customers who clock up fewer kilometres or drive hybrid vehicles. "We wouldn't do it if it wasn't the right thing to do economically. We have a strong view that it's the right thing for our customers, and it's the right thing for our community. So we think more and more customers will choose companies with better credentials in the community space and the environment space," says IAG chief executive Ian Foy. Judges say that correlation between sustainability and commercial success was plain to see in the award entries. Julia Hoare from PriceWaterhouse Coopers says those businesses that have strategically taken a long-term view have gained a significant competitive advantage. Other award winners include: Strategy and Governance - carboNZero programme
Workplace - Urgent Couriers
Marketplace - carboNZero programme
Environment - Urgent Couriers
Community - Fonterra/Sanitarium One company, Westpac, reached the finals of all categories, and was rewarded with a special commendation. |
