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21 February 2012
Open Education Resources
The Future Newspaper

Local company introduces zero waste

By Tamati Taylor

Environmental Affairs Correspondent

Naturally Baking Ltd is in the forefront of sustainability with its new zero waste policy.

Local company Naturally Baking has successfully introduced a ‘zero waste’ policy as part of its commitment to socially responsibility, a local environmental support meeting was told yesterday.

Ensuring the company’s operations are sustainable is an important part of being a socially responsible organisation, General Manager Lynne Peters told the meeting.

Lynne, with warehouse workers Sapphire Renwick and Michael Chou, gave a dynamic presentation to the meeting, showing how Naturally Baking has moved to a more sustainable operation, with the company vision being to ‘leave a small footprint’.

Lynne said Australian owners Overbaking Ltd had always accepted the need to be a socially responsible organisation, and that philosophy is reflected in practice within Naturally Baking.

Locally, Naturally Baking sponsors the junior rugby club, has a good staff training funding option, and understands that its employees have their own work-life balance issues, she said.

The idea of committing to zero-waste came from a suggestion made during employee consultation – introduced as part of Naturally Baking’s commitment to industrial democracy.

The suggestion came from a group of warehouse workers who were constantly dealing with rubbish being discarded within their area.

‘After we suggested a zero waste policy would be a good idea, the whole company held discussions, and it was decided to give it a go’ Sapphire said.

‘At first it wasn’t all that easy. There’s a lot of waste in an organisation such as ours, but if you take things a step at a time you can make a difference,’ Michael said.

‘Some of the other workers weren’t keen to change the way they did things, but eventually they saw the benefits. After a while people became more committed to working sustainably, and it almost became a competition. Most people are quite competitive about their results now, and more of us have adopted recycling at home. It’s great!’

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