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Sustainability…. ready steady go!

Like all businesses, we have felt we should be doing more in the sustainability space. And like all businesses, it felt hard to prioritize above the busy day to day of doing business. We have dabbled but never taken any strides.

The merging of the Otago Chamber of Commerce and the Otago Southland Employers’ Association into Business South Inc. was the perfect time to draw a line the sand and decide to do things differently.

While there is so much more to do, we are excited to say we have started the journey. The Board and BSI team are committed to being sustainable as an organisation but just as importantly, committed to supporting our businesses to become more sustainable.

This post is the first of many to share our sustainability story with you. Hopefully you will learn something from our experience. This is not going to be a linear process – we will learn as we go and try to share these learnings with you.

A few months in, here are some of our sustainability highlights:

Our team chose sustainability as one of our core Business South Inc. Values.
Our Board have committed to be Carbon Zero by June ‘23 and Carbon Positive by June ’24.
We have done a first measurement of our carbon as an organisation and are currently considering mitigation and offset strategies.
We have held workshops with our team to ask them what sustainability means to them and what opportunities they see for our business. This will inform our strategy.
We will be rolling out (in collaboration with BusinessNZ) our first sustainability training in August – An Introduction to Sustainability for SME’s.

So that’s a start to be proud of! With the support from our Board and BusinessNZ, the Business South team are committed to doing and enabling business that is good for our planet and people.

Thanks for tuning in to our first update. Watch this space – there is more to come!