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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!
When Mike Casey bought his house near Cromwell, it came with gas bottles on the side of the home for water and an expensive diesel system for the underfloor heating. He replaced both of them with a Steibel Eltron system and it's been saving him money ever since. As technical manager Bhawesh Singh told him at the Electrify Queenstown conference, there has been a big influx in enquiries from homes looking to get off the molecules and onto electrons.
Read moreDownloadConfidence that cutting regulations to make solar power more accessible - won't jeopardise people's safety. A new Regulation Ministry reports laid out a potential blueprint to legalise plug-in solar and reduce the time and cost of panel installation. Rewiring Aotearoa CEO Mike Casey shares his thoughts with Andrew Dickens.
The burgeoning demand for solar was also a chance to address a mismatch between the numbers of training opportunities available and young people searching for work, Casey said. "The mums of New Zealand are telling me that there's not enough apprenticeships for their kids and the solar installers of New Zealand are telling me there's not enough trained people."
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