Mehdi Shahbazpour and I during the Managing Change for Sustainability Lecture

Last week I gave a presentation to 3rd year University of Auckland students for a Engineering Management paper.  My lecture was entitled Managing change for Sustainability – Environmental Management Systems and the Role of the Engineer.

I encouraged the students to consider how sustainability related to their particular engineering discipline and about their potential role in the future of sustainability in New Zealand. Every university graduate, no matter what their discipline, should have at least a basic understanding of the concepts of sustainability and environmental management.

In the final year of my bachelor of mechanical engineering degree, I got involved in an industry based project at a Ready to Assemble furniture manufacturing company. The goal of the project was to investigate alternatives to the polystyrene based packaging method.  While from a functional and financial perspective it was not possible to replace the material with an environmentally friendlier alternative, we managed to reduce the the thickness of the material – resulting in substantial cost savings for the company.

It was during this project that I developed my passion for sustainability. I realised that substantial environmental improvements could be achieved by companies without the need for major investments. I asked myself ‘why are more New Zealand companies not implementing sustainability improvements when it actually isn’t rocket science’?

This was one of the underlying questions that I had in my head when I began my PhD research. I quickly realised that most New Zealand companies are performing really poorly in comparison to companies in other parts of the developed world. Sadly in the five years since then, New Zealand companies still see environmental improvement as a low priority. So we clearly still have a lot of work to do..

Through action research, surveys and a review of the existing literature I established the barriers SMEs face in progressing to various stages of environmental sustainability maturity. Most New Zealand companies tend to have a defensive or reactive approach to environmental improvement. They have other priorities and don’t yet experience significant drivers to improve their performance.

Arguably the most significant factor in the uptake of a sustainability strategy in an SME is the influence of the owner/manager. Without the buy-in of the owner of the company, sustainability initiatives will not be successful.

Typically SMEs who have a defensive approach to sustainability can be characterised by a lack of awareness and doubt over the benefits of sustainability. By identifying opportunities and focusing on ‘low hanging fruit’, SMEs can begin to see the benefits of environmental improvement initiatives. In doing so a platform can be developed to engage the company in a more systematic and repeatable approach. You can read more about this in my paper ‘Overcoming Barriers to Implementing Environmentally Benign Manufacturing Practices‘.