BRANZ is proud of its Diamond Certification to the EnviroMarkNZ programme administered by Landcare Research, and even though 2011 has been a challenging time from an environmental perspective - given that we are in the middle of a major refurbishment of our site at Judgeford - we have maintained our environmental performance in the face of significant change. 

Targets for 2011 that were set during 2010 time looked like they would take some doing, but BRANZ rose to the challenge and either met or exceeded them.

The first target was to meet the measure of 90% recycling of items from the refurbishment project and this target was exceeded as was reported in the BUILD article from the August / September 2011. The BUILD article also mentioned the commissioning of our pellet burner, which provides heating to our site.

The second target was to maintain our electricity consumption in line with the predicted usage - which took into account the outside temperature, the number of working days in the month and the number of staff. With the commissioning of the Pellet Burner consumption is down by at least 10%.

Another challenge was to hold our waste going to the Landfill at 100 tonnes which was the equivalent of the 2010 amount. It was seen as a stretch target, given the amount of waste that was to come from offices when they were cleaned out prior to their demolition. Our waste to landfill is however tracking well below 100 tonnes due to three major initiatives.

In 2009, we looked at why our waste was climbing each year and it was found that concrete blocks from tests were being placed in the skips going to the landfill. The concrete is now sent to a quarry where it is crushed and used for aggregate - saving us money and the landfill valuable space. The second major impact has been recycling of steel cabinets and other steel fittings while approximately 225 wheelie bins of paper has gone to be recycled.

Through monitoring of the water use going to our Rimu Building, a large spike in use was detected in August 2010. After talking to staff it was clear that no new tests were responsible for such a leap. An inspection of the drains did not show anything unusual and there was no greening of the grass surrounding the building to indicate an obvious leak.

An ultrasonic probe was put down the pipes to isolate the area of the leak - but the general noise associated with old piping meant that it could not be detected. With the refurbishment in full swing, Fletchers said they would close off the pipe work underneath the concrete slab and re route it through the ceiling.  This resulted in a dramatic reduction in water use which not only fixed the recent leak but also fixed others that had gone undetected for some time.

Not only does it make great reading from an environmental point of view - we are saving in excess of $1,000 a quarter in water rates - more if you include the December 2010 high.

This experience also highlights the value of monitoring our usage, as there were no indications of a leak apart from a spike in the graph.  Tracking our other environmental aspects on site means that we can fix issues as they arise.

In addition, the asbestos roofing on our Administration Building was also encapsulated and removed, which was reported in the October / November 2011 issue of BUILD.

Our progress was also reported in the November 15 2011 issue of the Kapimana News.

While there has been good progress on these big ticket items, we also continue to manage the other environmental aspects on our site, as recorded in our Aspects and Impacts Register

View our BRANZ Environmental Policy

This certification is at least equivalent to achieving ISO 14001; the International Environmental standard for good environmental management.

For more information on Enviro-Mark NZ

View our Diamond Enviro-Mark NZ certificate

Read an article on our achievement in BUILD 116 - BRANZ makes diamond