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Certified: A significant drop in emissions

Great news! Waste Management has received our Toitū Carbonreduce certification for 2021 – and we have reduced our carbon footprint with a result of 107.4 tCO2e/$M which is 9% below the 2021 target of 118.3 tCO2e/$M and a whopping 18.3% against our baseline result of 131.7 tCO2e /$M.

 

It means all the work we have done to reduce our operational carbon footprint emissions is paying off and we are well and truly playing our part in curbing climate change.

 

Waste Management already reduces methane emissions through our modern, Class 1 landfills – where we capture over 90% of the biogas produced and either destroy it or convert it to electricity – stopping harmful greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere.

 

We try to make further reductions in emissions at our landfills by assisting our customers to reduce via our Sustainability team's services such as education, training and audits, but ultimately it is out of our control. So, we have a large focus on reducing our operational carbon emissions.

 

Waste Management was the first waste company in New Zealand to put an Emissions Reduction Plan in place and have our business certified by Toitū Carbonreduce.

 

Each year, our business is audited by Toitū, and our sustainability team and our staff nationwide work hard to source and supply all the emissions data required from across the country, including complicated inputs such as fuel consumption, electricity, air travel, and solvent combustion at our Technical Services division.

Sustainability Manager Adam Weller and GM Strategy, Customer & Sustainability Ingrid Cronin Knight with our Toitū Carbonreduce certification.

Sustainability Manager Adam Weller says this Toitū certification has been even more complicated than usual because we discovered some greenhouse gas emission sources that were not included in our 2017 baseline, so we have added these to make sure our data, and our new carbon footprint budgets, are accurate.

 

We’ll be providing more information in our upcoming Sustainability Report.