As part of the Awanui network’s commitment to a greener healthcare sector, we’ve been working with Toitū Envirocare to become the first pathology group to obtain Carbon Reduce certification.
Over the past year, Procurement Manager Graham Maylam has taken on an accounting task of epic importance. He’s been helping to calculate the Awanui network’s carbon emissions. In doing so Graham has created a starting point for the group to reduce its environmental footprint.
Graham has worked alongside Toitū Envirocare, who provide services and tools that help businesses make positive environmental progress.
“To solve any problem the first thing you need to do is to pop the hood and figure out what parts need the TLC. We’ve never accounted for this kind of thing before, so we met with Toitū in early 2021 and started from scratch.
“Toitū identified 22 potential sources where Awanui produced carbon, and so we set about working with laboratories and suppliers to measure the extent of our emissions, ” says Graham.
A lot of the job involved working with suppliers to translate our spending into a carbon metric. Here, Graham’s existing relationships with suppliers really came in handy.
“Sometimes this was pretty straight forward. Calculating how far certain supplies have traveled, how much fuel we’ve used from getting something or someone from point A to point B. Other times it proved a bit more tricky, like obtaining information from suppliers who we no longer use.””
“COVID also made site visits challenging. At one stage I had managers going into refrigeration units to find these little stickers that indicated what type of gas we were using to run them. Thanks to everyone who played their part to get us to this stage!”
All of this hard work has culminated in the Awanui network’s very first Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory and Management Report, which will be available publicly, on the Toitū Envirocare website. The report allows Awanui to move onto the next stage in the journey, identifying the areas where we can make meaningful changes.
While those changes may not always be easy for a sector that relies heavily on established ways of doing things, the business case for climate action is clear. Through measuring and monitoring the Awanui networks carbon emission, the group is in a better position to make decisions that increase our efficiencies.