Our sustainability achievements and commitments
Our mission is to catalyse action for a net zero carbon future.
We use the power of business to help build a more inclusive and sustainable economy.
As a for-profit enterprise, we’re driven to use our skills, knowledge and services to empower organisations to improve their environmental performance. We also strive to hold ourselves accountable to the same standards we ask of our members.
Annual Impact Reporting
Our 2021-22 annual impact report is live
Our impact report is transparent, authentic, and showcases how proud we are of our performance across our environmental impact, caring for our people, working with our members, and giving back to our community.
Impact reporting is a tool that organisations are increasingly using to measure their impact on society. For us, this is not only the decisions we control in our own house, but the services we create and deliver for our members, and how they implement them.
Our impact report helps us better understand how we are delivering on our mission and where we can improve. As you will read, we are proud of the impact we have had to date and look forward to growing our impact, through more organisations, every year.
Previous reports
Certified B Corporation®
Toitū Envirocare is committed to being a business that not only does no harm but acts as a power for good. Toitū is more than our name, it is a commitment is to care for the life of this place, our people and future.
Certified B Corporations® (B Corps™) use the power of business to build a more inclusive, sustainable economy. They meet the highest verified standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. We believe that business can drive change; the B Corp framework supports our ambition for environmental regeneration and economic sustainability.
We are committed to being a business that not only acts as a power for good, but does no harm. Through our services, we empower other organisations to improve environmental performance, but within our own business we have taken specific steps to ensure we are improving our performance across five categories: governance, workers, customers, community, and the environment. So far, we have scored particularly well on customer and staff care. We aim to improve our scores at every future certification.
Recertification
We achieved B Corp recertification in late 2022. We had a very strong foundation for our work after our initial certification, as we’ve always aimed to run our business to look after our people, place and future.
The last three years of mahi are reflected in a change of score from 82 to 106.8, a 30% increase, thanks in part to recognition of a second impact business model and amending our company constitution. Our score has improved across each of the five areas, but of particular note:
- Amending our company Constitution to formally consider all stakeholders in decision making as a way of insuring social or environmental impact is core to our purpose. This change really cements our commitment to run our business for good, and consider impact over profit. At Toitū any profit is reinvested to create further impact, and we’re proud to have this formally part of our Constitution, as well as our culture.
- Improved the diversity of our Board
- Our lowest wage is still 20% over the living wage in Aotearoa and we have committed to this since we first became B Corp certified in 2019.
- We have also conducted a pay equity analysis to identify gender and ethnicity pay gaps so that we can target the areas we need to improve. While we have no horizontal gender pay gaps we do have some vertical gender pay gaps.
- Increased our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training offerings to our staff
- Increased the number of staff volunteer hours used by our team
- Maintained progress against our science-based targets for our greenhouse gas emissions
- Added a second impact business model recognising the environmental education we provide
- Recertified our impact business model recognising the impacts customers achieve in our programmes
Previous Achievements
- Toitū achieved B Corp Certification in January 2019 with a score of 82 points
- We were one of the first group of signatories to the B Corp Net Zero by 2030 pledge, announced on stage at COP25
- We contributed to the ANZ B Corp Climate Collective in 2021
Toitū Collective Impact
Since 2001, we have certified over 3,300 GHG inventories for companies from 5 countries, representing more than 263 million tonnes of GHG emissions – that’s more than twice New Zealand’s annual emissions.
Through our Toitū carbonreduce, net carbonzero and climate positive programmes we have helped hundreds of companies to measure, manage and mitigate their carbon emissions.
Our worldwide programme members have reduced emissions by over 8.4 million tonnes of emissions – that’s equivalent to the annual emissions of 2.4 million medium-sized petrol or diesel fuelled cars. On average, our members achieve over 20% reduction in emissions in a three to five year period.
Each year we run our annual Toitū Brighter Future Awards to recognise our members collective impact. As of June 2022, our top 10 carbon reducers (by volume) have collectively reduced 136,181 tonnes of emissions; that represents a 39% average reduction of their combined footprint of 337,203 tCO2e.
View the Brighter Future Awards winners here
Toitū Operational Impact
Our mission is to care for the life of this place, our people and our future. As part of this, we believe that we should be minimising the environmental impacts of our operational activities and maximising emissions reductions through the delivery and growth of our certification services.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
As the owner and operator of the Toitū net carbonzero programme, we do not claim to be Toitū net carbonzero certified. However, we meet all the same requirements as our certified clients. Our emissions inventory is audited annually and we purchase offsets to achieve a neutral emissions balance. We are also working to reduce emissions in line with climate science to achieve net zero emissions. For details of our inventory, reduction efforts and offsets please see the following disclosure statements. Historical disclosures prior to our 2016-17 base year are available upon request. Our third-party verification reports and emissions inventory reports are also available on request.
- Disclosure 2021 to 2022
- Disclosure 2020 to 2021
- Disclosure 2019 to 2020
- Disclosure 2018 to 2019
- Disclosure 2017 to 2018
- Disclosure 2016 to 2017
As part of our carbon management, we are a signatory of the UNFCCC Climate Neutral Now initiative, which focuses on measuring, reducing and offsetting climate impacts. In order to meet our Climate Neutral Now obligations, we have cancelled an additional 30 credits from the UN Clean Development Mechanism projects for the 2020-21 period.
Our greenhouse gas emissions targets have been assessed and approved by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi):
- Toitū Envirocare commits to reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 74% by 2030 from a 2017 base-year.
- Toitū Envirocare also commits to reduce absolute scope 3 emissions from business travel and employee commuting 57% by 2030 from a 2017 base-year.
- Toitū Envirocare is committed to net zero no later than 2050, including a Scope 1 and 2 95% reduction by 2050 and Scope 3 90% reduction by 2050 from a 2017 base-year. We will be seeking SBTi validation on this long-term target.
Environmental Management System
Our parent company Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research holds ISO 14001 verification for its environmental management system, of which we are a part. Our primary environmental impacts are also covered by our greenhouse gas emissions management targets and plans, and so the above work is our main mechanism to look after these and minimise impacts.
Climate-related risks and opportunities
Overview
What are climate-related risks and opportunities?
Climate change affects all of us, and the impacts will only intensify as global heating continues. Climate-related risks are those that arise from the impacts of a warming climate, as well as those related to the human responses to climate change and our transition responses. Risk assessments aim to understand the nature and level of climate change related risks, as well as opportunities. The assessment process will guide your organisation in how to reduce and respond to these risks, but if done thoughtfully can also highlight opportunities to build resilient operations, new revenue streams, and robust strategies for decades to come.
Understanding climate risk and opportunities enables an organisation to prepare mitigation strategies and identify business opportunities. The process to assess potential scenarios, determine the risks and opportunities ahead, and plan how to manage them will ensure an organisation is much more resilient in years to come. The assessments support risk prioritisation, which can then drive targeted action and investment in adaptation.
Understanding your climate risks and opportunities demonstrates company foresight and resilience to stakeholders and builds your organisation’s brand as a climate leader.
Climate scenarios
Climate change scenarios are a way of describing possible future changes to climate variables and hazards. There are a range of future climate scenarios based on the level of global heating that occurs. The scenarios help guide thinking on the severity and likelihood of impacts on operations, facilities, value chains and communities.
Toitū’s scenario-based approach for this process uses guidance developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); we focused on three key scenarios: orderly, disorderly and hot-house world.
Orderly: This is our best-case scenario based on a very stringent pathway and likely limits climate heating to around 1.5C. In this scenario, carbon dioxide emissions decline from 2020, reaching zero by 2100, with methane reducing in half; this scenario also requires negative emissions through removals, such as forest-based sequestration.
Disorderly: This is considered an intermediate scenario, with projected temperature rise of 2 or 2.5C. While it is the most probable scenario, it does depend on very sharp and stringent decarbonisation enacted in the 2030s. In this scenario, carbon dioxide emissions decline from 2045, reaching half (compared to 2050) by 2100, with methane reducing by about 25% compared to projected 2040 levels; this scenario also requires negative emissions through removals, such as forest-based sequestration.
Hot House World: This is taken as our worst-case scenario, resulting in climate heating of 3 or 4C. This scenario would see minimal change to current behaviour and practices, and thus emissions continue to rise throughout the 21st century.
How is Toitū building its climate resilience?
As part of its ongoing climate strategy, including work to align with its own certification standards and comply with other voluntary commitments such as the Climate Leaders Coalitoin Statement of Ambition, Toitū is developing its climate-related risk and opportunities portfolio. This process is ongoing as we work to embed it into our standard risk and strategic processes, including regular review cycles.
Toitū has completed an initial assessment of climate-related risks. The next phase of our project is to workshop that initial risk map with internal and key external stakeholders to validate and iterate the matrix. From there, Toitū will develop plans to minimise risks and maximise the opportunities and build them into our overall climate transition plans, alongside our emissions reduction strategies.
Toitū’s climate-related risks and opportunities
We've pulled together a summary table that provides a summary of our initial assessment, including the key risks and opportunities, potential impacts and our initial rating of these risks under our best-case scenario, an orderly transition that limits heating to 1.5C; the rating applies to the timeframe between now and 2050.
Our first risk assessment considered three main climate scenarios: orderly, disorderly or hot-house world (see above), as well as the current state baseline. While the IPCC scenarios are based on projections out to 2100, for our risk assessment we focused on the decades between now and 2050. We will release our full risk and opportunity assessment as part of our Transition plan following further stakeholder engagement.