Press release from Centre for Sustainable Practice
24 April 2013

Report highlights environmental impacts of kiwi lifestyles
- and identifies food production and consumption as easy resource reduction target

WANAKA: New research released today provides insight into the resource use of kiwi lifestyles and measures New Zealand’s environmental consumption against the internationally recognised ‘fair earth share’*.

The New Zealand Footprint Project report is the result of working with several communities across New Zealand to work out their resource use and design ways to reduce it.
The research attributes 56% of the country’s resource use to the way food and beverage are produced, distributed and consumed, 23% to consumer goods and far lower figures to travel, overseas holidays, household energy use and other activity.

Scientist and project manager Ella Lawton says addressing high resource consumption in food processes would be the simplest way to begin reducing the nation’s undesirably high ecological footprint.

“We were surprised at the food impacts given New Zealand’s easy access to arable land and that the land is very productive. Some foods such as fish, red meat and dairy have high footprints due to the amount of productive sea area and land they require to grow them. Reducing resource use through localising food systems, using backyards and community owned land would be the most effective way to reduce the national ecological footprint.”

The New Zealand Footprint Project, is an in-depth study funded by the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology and developed in collaboration with Victoria University, the then Auckland Council and Otago Polytechnic’s Centre for Sustainable Practice. It has taken 3 years to complete and has compared several typical New Zealand lifestyles as it sought to find the how lifestyles could provide a basis for living within a ‘fair earth share’ of 1.2 New Zealand equivalent hectares per person.

Highlights of the report are available in an easily digestible booklet (link below).

“This project is the first of its kind in New Zealand”, Lawton says. “I’m working now on further developing tools that all communities and councils can use when they’re looking at ways to reduce their own environmental footprints.”

As it identified the country’s ecological footprint, the research also found that New Zealanders spend 14% of their waking hours watching TV, nearly 20% in paid employment, 13% eating and drinking, 7% socializing and conversing and 5% preparing food and drink.

Ms Lawton was awarded a PhD in Architecture earlier this month - completing her thesis in Ecological Footprinting while working on the New Zealand Footprint Project.

Ends

*Fair Earth Share = world population /productive land and water. The fair earth share is 1.2 New Zealand equivalent hectares per person. The average New Zealand lifestyle currently uses 2.5 New Zealand hectares per person.

For the report: The New Zealand Footprint Project For the research detail: http://www.sustainable-practice.org/content/new-zealand-footprint-project

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