Lever Room

We've been selected to provide the Net Zero carbon footprint certification for Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest Climate Change & Business Conference.   The conference is timely as we tackle the tough questions the country is facing and consider new ideas and approaches. Early bird tickets are now available!   We’ll be certifying the event as Net Zero and providing a full Inventory Report while also incorporating New Zealand native carbon removals 🌿 Thanks to Environmental Defence Society (EDS), Sustainable Business Council NZ, Climate Leaders Coalition and Conference Directors Alana Douglas Fiona Driver for your fantastic work putting the annual event together. I think we can all agree the success of this initiative has been growing every year. 

High fives for 2025 🙌 It’s a great start to year at The Lever Room.  We’re excited to share the news that the amazing Ella Sheehy has joined our team. Ella is a creative with a love of nature (including the beautiful high peaks of Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park where this photo is taken!). She holds a Masters in Sustainable Business and is a sustainability specialist with experience in the textile industry and primary sector in both NZ and Australia. We are excited for our clients who are lucky enough to be supported by Ella undertaking their GHG footprints, decarbonisation roadmaps, and/or creating impact strategies and management systems. Welcome Ella—and bring on 2025! Ella Sheehy 🌿 🌸 🥳 💃 💚 #impactstrategy #impactreporting #climateaction #sustainablebusiness

The Lever Room has just supported Purpose Capital to make history 🥳 as the first Impact Investment fund in New Zealand to have its practices verified against the International Principles for Impact Management. Congratulations, Purpose Capital!  We were over the moon to be selected as the preferred partner to pioneer this independent verification, assessing the methodology against the best practice framework for integrating impact throughout the life of an investment. This work, overseen by the The Global Impact Investing Network—the leading industry body for impact investing globally—leverages our expertise in Impact Measurement and Management (IMM). It’s terrific to see Purpose Capital commit to this recognised global standard. The Impact Principles seek to enable capital mobilisation and deployment at scale with investor confidence and integrity, ultimately driving collective outcomes to help solve global challenges. Signatories to the Principles today represent more than a third of the global impact investing market and feature a diverse group of investors across all investor types, asset classes, impact themes, sizes, and geographies. Purpose Capital is the first investor to join from NZ! 👏👏👏   Click the link to learn more on how Purpose Capital found engaging with us and to download your copy of the report. https://lnkd.in/gDE4KGW4   “We feel a deep responsibility to insure we take a best practice approach to impact investing for the funds we manage and for the investment sector in New Zealand so that investors know if it's an impact investment, it “does what it says on the tin”. -         Bill Murphy, Chief Executive, Purpose Capital Purpose Capital have chosen to share the full report in the spirit of transparency and in the hope that it will be useful to others committed to the continued pursuit of best practice. 🔁 Repost this to help your network #SocialImpact #ClimateFinance #SustainableInvestment #ImpactMeasurement #ImpactInvesting Impact Investing Network Centre for Sustainable Finance: Toitū Tahua Responsible Investment Association Australasia (RIAA) Sustainable Business Council NZ Sustainable Business Network Edmund Hillary Fellowship (EHF) Lever Room

Can AI help us combat climate change—or is it too energy-hungry to be part of the solution? I enjoyed tackling this question in a recent interview on Radio New Zealand's Morning Report! 💡 While newer AI models require more energy to run (ChatGPT search 10x energy than google for e.g), they also offer good opportunities for advancing genuine efficiencies and impact prediction. 💡In the radio interview (audio file in article link), I talk about how at the Lever Room we're using machine learning (ML) in-house to help companies efficiently measure and reduce their emissions. With Microsoft now joining CDC in operating hyperscale data centres here, we have a unique opportunity to see the new developments built in the most sustainable way. "For countries like New Zealand who have a good renewable energy mix then we are at a really strategic advantage here especially if we're building that into our potential [and] planning.’’ With the predicted growth in data centres, we need to proactively plan to mitigate potential negative impacts through careful site selection, renewable energy capacity planning, and sustainable material choices for the data centres themselves. (Link in the comments for those interested in using timber in sustainable buildings.) ⏭️ It was fantastic to be interviewed alongside the amazing Izzy Fenwick by Eloise Gibson for this piece with Izzy sharing that’s she’s not anti-AI, just wasteful uses of it. Absolutely! 🙌 ⏭️We’re currently using AI/ML for three distinct applications in our sustainability and impact work: predicting environmental impact, optimizing Scope 3 emissions measurement, and improving information management. Watch this space, I'd love to see use of data for AI/ML applications to be net positive for this country and beyond… Thanks to Eloise Gibson RNZ for the invitation for radio interview. 🙏 💥 #ClimateTech #AIforGood #NetZero #ImpactInvestment #SustainableBusiness #WomeninClimateTech 💚 ➡️ Follow us over at Lever Room for future updates in the space

The results are out! We were selected to provide Net Zero Certification for New Zealand’s 2024 Climate Change & Business Conference. Carbon footprint analysis snapshots: 💡 Total per attendee emissions were 50.48kgCO2e  💡 Total daily operational emissions from the event were 14,385.65 kgCO2e  💡 Waste only contributed 0.04 tCO2e, with the conference team led by Alana Douglas and Fiona Driver taking steps to reduce waste including washing almost 600 lanyards! for reuse at next year's conference. 👏 Activities producing the highest portion of operational event emissions were Travel (77% of total emissions), Food & Beverage (12% of total emissions) and Accommodation (4% of total emissions). In addition to taking measures to reduce conference emissions as far as possible, operational residual emissions were removed through a native forest project on a family-owned farm in Marlborough where the owners have committed large parts of their land to forest regeneration by covenanting it and reforesting 368 hectares. The diverse native forest shelters an array of bird species, many types of trees, including podocarps like rimu, kahikatea, and matai, alongside kanuka and mānuka. 🌿 We’re proud to be supporting CCBC with Net Zero certification and carbon removals, and given knowledge is power, this data helps the team understand conference activity hot spots and track improvements over time. Congratulations and thanks to the amazing partners Environmental Defence Society (EDS) Sustainable Business Council NZ Climate Leaders Coalition for building such a well attended and important event for the country. 🙏 #CCBC24 🎉 #sustainablebusiness #deliveringnetzero #climateaction

Future global sustainability, resilience and carbon impact requirements for products, materials and the built environment. It was great to hear perspectives from Gensler’s Sustainability Strategist Benjamin Holsinger and our very own Rebecca Mills last week. Gensler is the world’s largest architecture firm by revenue and it’s shaping the future of cities with a massive 1.25 billion square feet of buildings designed annually. Thanks to Wool Impact for facilitating this industry webinar. Gretchen Foster framed the compelling opportunity for NZ wool and Alex Consoli was our fabulous moderator 👏 Key insights from the live discussion included: ➡️ Gensler Product Sustainability Standards are providing guiderails and already shifting entire sectors, - what materials get specified by architecture and design companies matters. ➡️ The shift towards nature positive provides a meaningful opportunity for NZ brands advancing solutions in this space. ➡️  In a rapidly evolving space, good metrics and a plan for action may mean the difference between achieving market access, or not.   Please reach out to hear more!  

We loved supporting team Futureful to achieve Climate Positive certification. They're living proof there's no company too small to create genuinely positive change! 💥 👏 🌿

A fantastic evening with the ‘Next 95’ at the Sustainable Business Network Awards. It was great to celebrate amongst peers. 🤩 Congratulations especially to Lodestone Energy Limited and Mike Casey Rewiring Aotearoa for taking out the top spots. We salute you! While we didn't make the top spot, we’re proud to be recognised for our work across multiple sectors. A couple of snapshots... ⏩ The Lever Room has supported the deployment of sustainability transformation plans covering 126,650 sq km of New Zealand’s land—equivalent to 47% of the country’s land area. ⏩ The Lever Room is currently managing reductions of 16.6 million tonnes of carbon on behalf of our clients. This is equivalent to approximately 65 million round-trip flights between Auckland and Sydney and would fill around 8,450 Empire State Buildings if it remained in gaseous form! 🫡    Sustainable Business Network 🥇 🙏 🌿 For more on the Next95, head here https://lnkd.in/gbhcvQrn

Great to be interviewed by Eloise Gibson for RNZ Radio New Zealand Morning Report today on the big opportunity in front of us!  “Mills says oceans have bought us precious time to cut fossil fuel emissions by absorbing both heat (about nine tenth of the heat humans have added to Earth so far) and carbon dioxide, preventing the land surface we live from the feeling anything like the full effects of our greenhouse gas emissions. They could do more. Marine plants are only part of it, she says. "There's also things like ocean-based renewable energy, low carbon ocean-based food...." "There's a dominant narrative that we're a small country so it doesn't matter what we do on the world stage, whereas actually if you look at our marine space, we're responsible for a big chunk of the planet. The ocean plays a major role in regulating our climate and can be both a source and sink for carbon." Listen to the short interview here: 👇 https://lnkd.in/gyPPDt7j   And supporting article: https://lnkd.in/g-wxRbxv Lever Room

The Lever Room has just been announced as a finalist in the 2024 Sustainable Business Awards. We’re excited to have been selected for the inaugural list of Next 95 – a brand new list of leaders and innovators progressing sustainable business solutions at scale in New Zealand, announced today. Selected from the 2024 Sustainable Business Awards nominations, we can’t wait to see what’s next. Wish us luck for the big night on 27 November! Check out our fellow finalists at the Sustainable Business Network 🙌