HMA goes carbon neutral

HMA goes carbon neutral

Hall McMaster & Associates Ltd have become the first professional human service teachers and practitioners in New Zealand to be certified carbon neutral through Landcare Research’s carboNZeroCertTM programme.

HMA Director Ken McMaster said, “At HMA maintaining our position as a good corporate citizen is important to us - seeking carboNZero certification is one way to contribute to this aim.”

HMA is a team of professional human service teachers and practitioners offering blended learning solutions to organisations in the social service sector. They work as trainers, programme developers, supervisors and writers in the area of human service work. Much of their work occurs in the areas of consultation in criminal justice work, social work with men, family violence prevention training programmes, child protection, the interviewing of children experiencing trauma, abuse issues, and psychological assessment and therapy. This work occurs both in New Zealand and Australia.

To achieve carboNZero certification, HMA committed to a three-step process of measuring and reducing its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, then offsetting its remaining unavoidable emissions.

This meant measuring HMA’s GHG emissions, or carbon footprint, and understanding where emissions were coming from. Most of HMA’s emissions came from travel, particular international and domestic air travel.

HMA then had to make a commitment to manage and reduce those emissions. The aim to reduce air travel by 3% for the coming year will contribute to meeting this target.

The remaining unavoidable emissions were offset through the purchase and cancellation of verified carbon credits from the TrustPower Tararua II PRE Windpower project.

Because HMA buys its electricity from Meridian energy, which has carboNZero certification, no carbon credits were required to offset its electricity usage.

An external, independent auditor checked the process before the carboNZero programme small enterprise certification was issued.

Landcare Research’s carboNZero programme is an internationally recognised GHG emissions management and reduction certification scheme, through which remaining unavoidable emissions are mitigated through the provision of verified carbon credits.

The carboNZero programme is the only accredited ISO14065 GHG verifier outside of the United States of America and the world’s first GHG certification scheme to receive international accreditation from the Joint Accreditation System – Australia and New Zealand (JAS-ANZ). This means they offer a framework for businesses here and overseas to measure and report their carbon footprint with confidence and credibility as it has been verified against a global standard and is accepted in 50 major world economies.

The small enterprise programme is available to all small enterprises with a single site that produces less than 50 tonnes of GHG emissions per year.

ENDS

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