Application

All Education Counsellor Authority of New Zealand, Ltd. (“ECANZ”) members, staff members, suppliers, partners, contractors and agents.
 

Purpose

To provide a vision and a set of principles to guide our actions to support sustainability and improve our environmental performance.
 

Introduction

In establishing this policy, ECANZ reinforces its commitment to build on its achievements in the efficient management of energy, water and key material resources, and the minimisation of waste and emissions, and commits to continue to find new and innovative ways to demonstrate leadership in research, teaching, learning, operations, partnerships, capacity building and networking to advance social, environmental and economic sustainability.
 

Our commitments coalesce into a vision for ECANZ where:

• Operating towards a level of full sustainability is actively encouraged and supported
• Our achievements in this regard are to a level where they can make a difference for the world
• Staff members are attracted to ECANZ to practice sustainability
• Ideas and concepts around sustainability are germinated and taken beyond ECANZ to the workforce and society, where they are further developed and brought to fruition, and
• Staff, suppliers, contractors, agents and our key partners
  • recognise their role as stewards of the resources they use
  • take action to prevent and minimise adverse impacts on land, freshwater and marine environments and global climate processes as a result of their activities and
  • protect and enhance the ecosystems, and life-supporting characteristics of our world

Principles and policy statements

In addition to the vision presented above, this document lays out the key principles that ECANZ will follow to achieve our obligations with regard to sustainability:
 

Innovation towards a sustainable future

While we recognise the intrinsic value of knowledge and diverse disciplinary intellectual traditions, we also recognise that finding solutions to the challenges faced in pursuit of sustainability will require expertise from across many disciplines.

Because of the critical and urgent nature of these challenges, we are committed to promoting and encouraging staff who collaborate across disciplines, offices, and national boundaries to generate and disseminate the knowledge necessary to achieve sustainability.

We are committed to ensuring that the services our clients receive, across a comprehensive portfolio of professional services, includes opportunities for understanding the role that their chosen fields have to play in the pursuit of sustainability, and that they develop the knowledge and skills necessary to contribute towards sustainable societies.

ECANZ recognises that we cannot plunder the future in order to pay for the present and is committed to ensuring that we have a sustainable organisation that will endure.

We will act as a role model for sustainable practices and involving all our staff in on-going improvement in our environmental performance.

We will commit to achieving net-zero carbon and to publish meaningful metrics of our progress towards overall sustainability

This includes:

• minimising the energy, water and material resources we use, including electricity, gas, water and recycled water, single use and disposable materials, packaging and plastics
• preventing and minimising our wastes (including food waste) and emissions at source by monitoring and actively managing activities including air travel
• recovering resources for re-use and recycling including water, research equipment, building fittings and furniture and digital items
• applying sustainability principles to the design, building, refurbishment, and operation of our buildings and to the management of our campuses and biodiversity reserves
• apply considerations of biodiversity and ecosystem enhancement, with reference to locally endangered and threatened species, to our campuses, forest reserves and adjacent marine reserves
• promoting and accommodating the use of sustainable modes of transport including cycling, walking, public transport, and electric vehicles including bicycles

We will continue to draw on knowledge and experience within and beyond ECANZ and will apply life-cycle costing to fully inform decision making of the short term and the long-term costs and benefits of options in planning and procurement.
 

Partnerships for sustainability

The priority of ECANZ is to be recognised and valued by our communities for the contributions we make towards a more sustainable future for all.

We are committed to collaboration and cooperation with our stakeholders and organisations that are leaders in sustainability, and to learning from and sharing experiences in research, teaching and learning, as well as sustainable operating practices.