Auckland City Toyota: a Toitū enviromark diamond Case Study

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Auckland City Toyota is Auckland's home of Toyota with three locations across Auckland: 101 Great North Road Grey Lynn; 7 Forge Way Mt Wellingon; and their newest store 233 Great South Road Greenlane. They pride themselves on delivering an ideal vehicle solution. Toyota New Zealand believes a better tomorrow starts today.

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For Auckland City Toyota, achieving Toitū enviromark diamond certification has enabled the dealership to save on expenses, help the environment, and bring staff together — all while the business continues to grow.

Toitū enviromark diamond certified organisations have a robust environmental management system (EMS) in place to identify their significant impacts and then develop internal policies and plans to prevent or reduce those impacts.

Organising, implementing and monitoring new cost and environmental initiatives is led by a dedicated Environmental Champion who regularly visits each site to check they are undertaking the necessary activity and inspections.

The large inner-city dealership, with its 100 staff working across three locations, has reduced its power consumption by a massive 48 per cent since 2011 when it began working with Toitū Envirocare.

These power savings are attributed to changes in lighting, plus higher levels of staff awareness. Auckland City Toyota replaced existing HiBay and flood lighting to more efficient LED and lower wattage lighting. These changes resulted in savings of approximately $34,000 over a period of eight years.

Since 2011 all Toyota and Lexus dealers have been required to join the Toitū enviromark programme and address their environmental impacts. Toyota New Zealand has worked closely with Toitū Envirocare's Senior Environmental Advisor Chris Bailey in the nationwide dealer roll-out of the programme. This has included annual training, development of documents and templates, and provision of legal advice and general guidance to assist each dealer with setting up and running their environmental activity.

The Auckland dealership separates waste into the following categories: soft plastics, cardboard, general recycling, metals and landfill.

Previously, an average 1.8 tonnes of waste per month were sent to landfill. Now, with robust recycling methods in place, the dealership sends an average of 1.4 tonnes – even despite business growth. This prevents an average of two cubic metres of waste per month going into landfill.

Auckland City Toyota has also replaced its single use cardboard cups with porcelain cups for customers and glass cups for staff.  The glass cups will pay for themselves in one-and-a-half months when the company will start saving money on disposable cups.

Engaging staff is essential to the on-going success of the programme and the Environmental Champion sends regular internal emails focusing on current and new initiatives, many of which have come from employees. A secondary benefit — and intention — of Auckland City Toyota’s process is that staff take some of the environmental learnings back into their homes and communities.

Auckland City Toyota’s Environmental Champion, Shelley Johnson, says it can be a challenge for everyone to continue reducing environmental impact while the company is growing, but the financial and environmental benefits — now and in the future — are worth it.

“Toyota New Zealand provided us with bespoke templates and training to help us set up a robust Environmental Management System across our three sites, and Toitū Envirocare support us with expert advice and guidance on our business and legal environmental obligations” said Shelley. “To anyone looking to achieve certification, I would say do it, it’s the right thing to do and once you get going, you’ll find its easier than you expected.”

Auckland City Toyota is part of the national Toyota New Zealand dealership network of 64 sites in the Toitū enviromark certification programme.

Enviro-Mark Diamond logoToitū enviromark diamond certification

Toitū enviromark diamond certified organisations have all the components of an ISO 14001 system in place. They have internal systems to ensure that their plans and policies are followed and to identify any opportunities for change and improvement. They have top management involvement in managing the EMS and its continuing stability.

To achieve Toitū enviromark diamond certification, an organisation:

  • Controls all important documentation to ensure only the most up to date versions are being used;
  • Has an internal EMS audit programme in operation, ensuring expected outcomes are occurring as planned;
  • Periodically has top management review the performance of the EMS;
  • Formalises the roles and responsibilities for people working for and on behalf of the organisation;
  • Communicates appropriately both internally and externally;
  • Ensures appropriate training is given to people working with the EMS;
  • Documents all procedures relating to managing the system (both system and operational procedures);
  • Has a good system for managing problems (non-conformities and opportunities for improvement);
  • Sets objectives and targets for driving improvement and has programmes in place to meet those targets;
  • Develops, implements and tests environmental emergency plans;
  • Identifies and evaluates their significant environmental issues arising from activities, products and services;
  • Actively monitors their ongoing compliance with New Zealand legislation and ensures they are aware of any changes to obligations;
  • Produces an environmental policy statement;
  • Understands the scope of their EMS (i.e., are there any parts of the organisation that need to be excluded from the EMS and why);
  • Exhibits no non-compliances with New Zealand’s applicable health and safety and environmental legislation.