Southland is a pretty awesome place to live. We can produce our own milk and meat, grow a huge number of vegetables and grains, and our fruit trees are known for their spectacular crops. But there are some things we aren’t so great at; growing coffee is one of them. It’s not easy to produce coffee, tea, sugar, cocoa, bananas and cotton (among other things) in New Zealand so we have to rely on our neighbours overseas to get our daily fixes.

In terms of the sustainability challenges we are facing, some would argue that the advertising industry has played a big part in getting us into this mess, through it’s role in promoting materialism and ego-driven consumption. (Clive Hamilton is a particularly strong advocate of this position).

Here at the Invercargill TOP 10 Holiday Park, we are proud members of the Southland Sustainable Business Network and enjoy reading the regular newsletters sent to members. However, I still feel we are at times inclined to be price driven rather than always looking at the sustainability issues when we do things. We are as guilty as the next person and it's only because we have the benefit of hindsight from building several units and also the early involvement with the Sustainable Tourism South Project that we started down the track of thinking differently.

When we began searching for local businesses who were implementing sustainable practices, we found a lot of examples of good stewardship. The Anchorage Motel in Te Anau encourages their guests to take away their toiletries and finish it up, rather than leaving behind a half used product. They also supply motel units with re-usable bags for guests to use. Other accommodation providers are collecting used bars of soap and returning them for manufacture into biodiesel. CleanBiz, a cleaning product supplier, takes back empty containers from customers, washes and re-uses them.

Sometimes, with all the best intentions, changes we make result in some unintended consequences. Some environmental solutions actually create other problems. Most people or organisations who have started their sustainability journey have at least one story to share along these lines. You know, when you have tried to change something to improve the environmental outcomes, but for some reason or another it has ended up causing another problem that you didn’t intend.

If you are keen to go down the road of obtaining an 'ecolabel' to prove to your customers that you are as green as you say you are, the next step is to work out which certification programme suits your needs. It's a complex business, but thankfully there is a really handy tool to help you.

If you are ever so lucky to have the opportunity to have a say in the design of your workplace or home, you'll find yourself with hours of research to do. When you begin to look into it, there are so many opportunities to make the indoor spaces we spend time in more energy efficient, water efficient, pleasant and healthier places to be. Something also worth putting some grey matter to, is what changes we can make to our existing building stock to achieve the same outcomes. The following are some innovative ideas to get you thinking about retrofitting.

We have a number of businesses in Southland who have implemented the LEAN system, following on from receiving training through the former Enterprise Training Programme. Recently one business asked me what the difference was between an Environmental Management System (EMS) and the LEAN system. The following is summarised from a paper written by  Ross & Associates Environmental Consulting, Ltd for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and outlines how these are different systems, but are complementary in some ways.

Ideas Shop founding partner, and regular contributor to Venture Southland’s former Enterprise Training programme, Dan Ormond attended the COP16 climate change talks in Cancún, México from 29 November to 10 December.

Everyday business actions can impact on the environment, often without anyone knowing. Environment Southland frequently responds to incidents involving the release of pollutants where no perpetrator can be found. These incidents contribute directly to the degradation of our world-class natural environment.

It is becoming increasingly important to everyday business practice to be resource efficient, especially when you consider the fact that businesses contribute 45 percent of rubbish to landfill in Southland. Donna Peterson from Wastenet Southland shares her views.