Celebrating sustainability

Focusing on small simple changes is the best way to become more sustainable in our every day lives, says Nicola Turner, a sustainability advocate who headlined the latest MAS Presents webinar held in November.

Nicola was joined by host Te Radar for MAS Presents: Nicola Turner and Celebrating Sustainability.

She shared her sustainability journey – from working in marketing to encourage customers to buy more consumer goods to reducing her carbon footprint to the point where her family fills just one wheelie bin of rubbish each year.

Nicola said it can feel overwhelming to start trying to make your life more sustainable, but that focusing on one small change at a time is the key.

“No one can do everything. None of us can. But everyone can do something,” she said.

Nicola’s journey began with changing the hand soap her family used after her husband developed dermatitis on one of his fingers. Since that time, she has changed the way she and her family eat, growing vegetables and composting food waste. They have become more mindful of the products they use on their bodies and to clean with, and rarely shop for clothing or homeware, but when they do the focus is on quality and longevity.

 “Somewhere along the line, I realised this is better for our own wellbeing, which was why we started the journey. But it's also better from an environmental wellbeing point of view, because we're putting a lot less of those synthetic chemicals back out into the world around us. And because we were really simplifying what we were buying, we were buying a lot less and then creating a lot less waste.”

Nicola said this had saved them a lot of time and money and made them feel more connected to “something bigger than ourselves.”

“There's so much power in choosing the small, easy changes first, because if we pick a really small, simple change, it feels way more accessible, and we're way more likely to do it. It will light up that reward centre in our brain and we’ll get all of those good feels. And then we'll go on to make more changes.

“No matter how small or insignificant a change feels, it becomes a gateway to more change. If I think about my journey, I started by changing my hand soap and now this is what I do for a living.”

A bigger impact

Nicola and Te Radar were joined by Sustainable Business Network (SBN) Chief Executive Rachel Brown and MAS Head of Investments and Business Development Helen McDowall for a panel discussion after Nicola’s presentation.

SBN is celebrating its twentieth anniversary since it was established this year, to help connect businesses that wanted to improve things from an environmental or social perspective but needed guidance and advice to know where to start.

“Our role is to make it easy for people to start. So, there are people at the beginning of the journey and often actually, they are doing some good stuff, they just hadn't really thought about it in a sustainability context, and then there are the people who are already progressive in their businesses,” Rachel said. 

“And what we try and do is make them connect with others so that we can grow that industry or that whole grouping, so they slowly take over the mainstream.”

She said one of the biggest changes over the past two decades is the growth of collaboration between businesses of all sizes.

“We're bringing the big and the small together and all coming up with common issues and having a crack at solving them.”

Conscious investing

Helen McDowall said choosing the right KiwiSaver provider is a really long-term decision and making sure your money is invested in things that are good for the planet and society as a whole hugely impacts how sustainable your life is overall.

She said a common misconception is that people think they will sacrifice returns if they choose to invest ethically – but that it is important to consider the timeframe for retirement savings.

“In the short-term that can be true, there can be a difference. And we're seeing that this year and that's largely because of the Ukraine situation. So, we're seeing the cost of resources has just skyrocketed. And that means that providers like MAS, who made a deliberate decision to exclude or minimise investments in fossil fuels are going to be impacted.”

However, Helen said a good example is to look at the New Zealand Super Fund, which made the decision to go low or no carbon, because long-term they believe they will get superior returns from that decision because nobody is going to be investing in those fossil fuels in the long-term.

“So, it's about your timeframe. And, of course, with MAS, we've got a retirement savings scheme, we've got the MAS KiwiSaver scheme, those are long-term investments. So, there may be some diversion in returns over the shorter term. But over the longer term, we don't believe that you have to pay in terms of return.”

MAS Members are able to view MAS Presents: Nicola Turner and Celebrating Sustainability until 21 December 2022 on Āki, MAS health and wellbeing hub.