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5 Environmental Report
This chapter of the Ministry for the Environment’s Annual Report provides an update on our environmental performance for the 2005–2006 financial year. The Ministry’s environmental performance is measured using the following key parameters: materials used, waste and energy (including business travel and the Ministry’s carbon footprint).
Highlights and Challenges
The 2005–2006 financial year yielded both significant highlights and areas in which to focus improvements for the 2006–2007 year. The major outcomes of this year’s environmental performance include:
- 99 percent of publications used chlorine-free paper and 93 percent of this paper had content that was recycled
- domestic air travel per full-time staff member decreased by two percent
- total vehicle use (including Ministry and rental cars) decreased by 21 percent
- Environment House was rated as a highly energy efficient office building, using 40 percent of the average energy use of similar buildings in New Zealand.
One of our key challenges for 2006–2007 is to reduce the amount of total waste we generate as our total waste (including recycling and composting) increased by 21 percent in the last year.
In conclusion, it is clear there are definite areas of environmental performance for the Ministry to celebrate. Policies have been developed and implemented and staff awareness raised in key areas resulting in a performance level in these areas we can be proud of. However, there are also areas where our performance could be improved. Attention will be given to these areas in 2006/2007.
