Materiality
Waitemata sandstone. Image – Craig Ross
These sustainability web pages cover issues and indicators that are material to our government owners, stakeholders and our own operations. We endeavour to report all topical and significant aspects of our activities in a balanced, transparent manner, and meet the expectations of our government owners and other key stakeholders. We work with the BusinessNZ‘s and the Sustainable Business Council, and the Sustainable Business Network. Engagement processes with our key stakeholder partners and their priorities, as aligned to our science outcomes and impacts, are outlined in our Statements of Corporate Intent and Annual Reports.
Our performance and reporting are reviewed by our government owners, expert panels, our clients (via meetings, contract discussions and the external annual client survey).
Policies for non-financial data
- Cover our parent company, Landcare Research New Zealand Limited—our subsidiaries are excluded, except where stated, because they run independent systems and report on their own performance via their web site(s).
- Include measures of company activities that have the potential for significant impact on the environment. These include:
- Impute CO2 emissions from the travel and energy use (electricity, coal and gas) associated with our research activities, and the amount of our CO2 emissions we offset, plus source of carbon credits for the offset. We follow. carboNZero programme approved metrics and systems for measuring and reporting greenhouse gas emissions and offsets
- Paper (kgs) used in our multi-functional devices (all staff have unchecked access to both)
- Discuss IT equipment and suppliers (all staff have a PC or laptop, and these are updated regularly)
- Measure energy consumption for all Landcare Research office locations. These data include what is used or produced by casual workers, visitors and some co-located staff from our subsidiary and other organisations. However, where another organisation or subsidiary is tenanted in a distinct section of the same building, exclude their environmental footprint (pro rata on a floor area occupancy and number of FTEs) from our data as far as possible.
- Exclude activities of on-site contractors although their activities may inflate our energy and water usage and waste produced.
- Disclose the numbers of animals and ‘hazardous or new organisms’ used in our research, including the regulatory approval processes and consents for such use
- Report use of animals on a calendar year – the same basis as required by MPI
- Disclose research on genetically modified organisms (if such research is undertaken)
- Report on all staff management and capability issues relevant to Landcare Research as a knowledge organisation
- Include research associates working with us in New Zealand but not subcontractors in other organisations
- Report on science excellence and science outputs using international bibliometric databases as well as our own systems
- Include research associates but not subcontractors in another if they are the sole author
- Report on EEO issues as required by the New Zealand Human Rights Commission
- Provide data on H&S issues and our level of compliance with the Accident Compensation Commission (ACC)’s Workplace Safety Management Programme
- Report on all issues and data required by MBIE as per the Core Funding Agreement and their directions and guidance to CRIs for Annual Reports and the Statements of Corporate Intent. Additional confidential (e.g., commercial sensitivity) information has to be provided to MBIE for the shareholding Ministers. http://www.msi.govt.nz/get-connected/crown-research-institutes/ and http://www.msi.govt.nz/get-connected/crown-research-institutes/cri-toolkit/
- Use standard MBIE categories and definitions where available, e.g., for reporting of publications and in categorising our staff. These categories are consistent with those previously used to CCMAU (Crown Company Monitoring Advisory Unit) and then COMU (Crown Ownership Monitoring Unit)
- Define and document procedures and assumptions in compiling data all non-financial indicators to ensure accuracy and year-to-year consistency in data.
- Report any changes in accounting procedures. Where these occur, provide comparison with previous accounting data to enable meaningful comparisons.
- Include previous years’ results for key indicators, to show trends and annual variations.
- Document and explain all material breaches of compliance with any statutory or regulatory legislation.