Business Battle Totals "Off The Planet"

Business Battle Totals "Off The Planet"

Bike Wise Media release, 15 March 2007

This year’s Bike Wise Business Battle saw more than 10,155 cyclists clocking up enough kilometres to ride around the earth twenty times. Altogether, participants from 513 organisations pedalled 816,682 kilometres - also enough to get to the moon and back!

The annual Business Battle is co-ordinated by Bike Wise and was held this year from 19 February to 4 March as part of Bike Wise Week. Companies taking part registered each staff member’s accumulated cycling distance during the period, and competed in their size category to get the highest percentage of staff biking.

Programme Director Brent Skinnon says he is absolutely stoked with this year’s results.

“We had more than double the 4,500 that took part last year, and particularly pleasing is that more than a quarter of this year’s participants (2,685) said that they didn’t usually cycle.

“It shows once again that more and more New Zealanders are thinking about cycling as a better way to get from A to B than talking the car. It’s quicker over short distances, good for the body and heaps better for the environment.”

Rough estimates from Land Transport New Zealand indicate that driving a car just 10kms generates 2.4kgs of global warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

“Most of the battle participants do things like bike to work instead of taking the car. By not driving those kilometres, they’ve saved more than 81,000 litres of petrol and nearly 200,000 kilograms of C02 from the atmosphere,” Mr Skinnon said.

Businesses competed for 21 SPARC Push Play Participation Awards, and numerous other general and spot prizes including Avanti bikes and sumptuous shouts. Altogether, over 300 prizes were given out.

Mr Skinnon said that he expects the Business Battle will continue to become more popular.

“Every year we have more businesses taking part as word spreads about how enjoyable it is. If you’re looking for a way to inject a bit of activity and teamwork into your working environment, why not give it a try next year? Maybe we’ll clock up enough kilometres to reach the sun!”

You can find out more about the Business Battle at the Bike Wise website (www.bikewise.org.nz).

Winners of the SPARC Push Play Participation Awards were:

Organisation Size
Very Small
(3-6 Employees) Organisation Participation Staff Total kms
4ormfunction 100% 6 3193
St John Education Wellington 100% 3 53

Small
(7-24 Employees) Organisation Participation Staff Total Kms
Synapsys N.Z. Ltd 100% 9 88
Powell Webber & Associates 100% 11 894

Medium
(25-99 Employees) Organisation Participation Staff Total Kms
InFact Ltd 100% 28 2945
MWH Nelson 100% 51 3749

Large
(100-499 Employees) Organisation Participation Staff Total Kms
SunGard AvantGard 94% 108 8960
Nelson City Council 71% 132 7808

Very Large
(500+ Employees) Organisation Participation Staff Total Kms
MWH Ltd 39% 289 14656
Rotorua District Council 23% 121 7778
Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology 20% 159 14169

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