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Ahead of an SBN Masterclass event in March, Rewiring Aotearoa's Mike Casey offers his top tips about communicating sustainability effectively, adding to advice from John Berry, Gabrielle Pritchard, Albert Bifet and Laura Cibilich.
NZBusiness Magazine talked to experts about communicating sustainability and the top tips were:
As Rewiring Aotearoa's Mike Casey says, it's important to frame sustainability as an opportunity rather than a sacrifice. Focus on the benefits for business alongside environmental impact.
“Unlike a lot of environmental NGOs, we like to talk about substitution rather than sacrifice and we tend to put the economics ahead of the emissions, because when it comes down to it, that’s what most people care about. We are positive, pragmatic and transparent and we try to communicate our data in ways that everyday New Zealanders will understand by using analogies, comparisons and infographics.
“We don’t like to demonise fossil fuels as they have been central to human progress and instead we talk about the arrival of a better, cheaper, cleaner energy source that is now taking over. We prefer to focus on how the future could be better; we show that individuals have more agency than they might think; and we use personal stories of those who have already electrified to speed up the ‘neighbourhood effect’.”
The Sustainable Business Network's Communicating Sustainability Masterclass is on 25 March at AUT. Get your tickets here!
In the last Electric Avenue of 2025, we look at the two biggest trends in the world of energy; the Government goes electric for its fancy fleet upgrade; Nick Offerman offers his services to a US campaign extolling the virtues of EVs; Australia shows what's possible in new homes when you add solar, batteries and smart tech; a start-up selling portable solar and battery systems that wants it to be as easy and common as wi-fi; and The Lines Company looks to put some solar on the roof of the Ōtorohanga Kiwi House.
Read moreDownloadWhen it comes to electric farming, "the numbers are becoming undeniable," says Nicholson Poultry's Jeff Collings. With 60kW of solar, a Nissan Leaf as a 'farm quad', electric mowers, an electric ute that can run a water blaster, and even a chicken manure scraper made out of a wrecked Tesla that, as Rewiring's Matt Newman says, looks a bit like something out of Mad Max, "almost everything is electric". There aren't many others in New Zealand who have gone this far down the electric road. And, with his electric Stark Varg, the fastest off-road motorbike in the world, he's obviously having plenty of fun on that road, too.
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