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RNZ News
3 days ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Public sector cuts put pressure on Hutt Valley social enterprise at Remakery
The Remakery is based inside a converted old plaster factory. Photo: Bella Craig/RNZ A Hutt Valley social enterprise says demand for basic needs has increased since the public sector cuts. Common Unity Project Aotearoa is based in a building called the 'The Remakery' - home to a koha cafe, community garden and textile workshop. The group has provided community support for more than 12 years, giving away fresh produce and clothing, and hosting training workshops, but as demand soars, they're after more donations to keep going. Based in an old plaster factory on Waiwhetū Road, the Common Unity project is a team of six part-time paid staff and a large group of volunteers, relying on community and business donations, as well as seasonal fruit and veges grown on its grounds. General manager Hannah Pilbrow said the project's core was the building it was housed in, which gave people a sense of belonging. Common Unity Project general manager Hannah Pilbrow (left) and cafe manager Michaela Taylor (right). Photo: Bella Craig/RNZ "We do huge amounts of community workshops and training," she said. "We have a big māra kai [garden] that's maintained by volunteers and we share that produce with the community. "We do a koha cafe using that produce and also [use] produce from our partnership with Kaibosh, which is rescued food. "We have a community compost scheme, where people can come and compost here, if they can't do that at home and in our local primary school, where [the] community began, we still teach gardening and cooking to the kids there." Only half the building is currently used, because the other half has been deemed an earthquake risk and cordonned off, while they fundraise to make structural improvements. Outside, The Remakery is home to gardens, where volunteers harvest produce to put on a 'sharing shelf', free to the community. Sew Good Collective manager Roberta Petit. Photo: Bella Craig/RNZ Pilbrow said demand for food and essential items had increased in Wellington, since the public sector cuts. "I think you know, in Wellington, especially in the past couple of years, we've really seen the effect of the public service cuts," she said. "People being out of work is very challenging financially." Last year, the project ran more than 250 events, supported 2000 people and grew more than 700kg of organic produce. Fruit and vegetables grown on site are also used at the koha cafe, where people can get a hot meal once a week. Manager Michaela Taylor said the model worked, because they focussed on seasonal food. "[It's] pay what you can afford, so when we have the cafe open, if they can afford $2 or $12, whatever they can afford. "It works, because we stick to locally grown and sustainable food sources [for] most of the food that we cook with. At the moment, the recipes tend to be courgettes, pumpkin or tomato based." The cafe also runs free barista courses for people looking to learn an extra skill. Sew Good Collective volunteers. Photo: Bella Craig/RNZ Taylor said The Remakery's sharing shelf was in high demand and refilled several times a day. "More people are coming to see the sharing shelf, so we've had to stagger during the day, when we put it out, so that it's not all consumed by the first wave. "We put it out in the afternoon as well for the mums or parents picking up [their children] from school." Roberta Petit runs the Sew Good Collective, another branch of the project, which runs workshops where people sew together recycled materials - free of charge. Items for sale from The Remakery, such as honey, chutney and eggs. Photo: Bella Craig/RNZ Clothing is donated to Hutt Hospital, Wellington City Mission and a refugee centre in the CBD. "All our machines and our textiles are donations from the community," Petit said. "What we offer is the opportunity to learn a new skill - a life skill - and the opportunity to open a new cycle of materials that otherwise will be thrown in the landfill." They also use donated clothes that are deemed faulty to be more sustainable and help curb overconsumption of fast fashion. Funding the project's services comes from a range of charities and community organisations, and through items made on site and sold in their shop. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
3 days ago
- Business
- RNZ News
Demand increases for Hutt Valley social enterprise
food life and society 39 minutes ago A social enterprise in the Hutt Valley said demand for basic essentials has increased since the public sector cuts. Common Unity Project Aotearoa is based in a building called the The Remakery - home to a koha cafe, community garden and textile workshop. It's been providing support to the community for over 12 years, by giving away fresh produce, clothing and and hosting training workshops. But as demand soars, so too does the need for more donations. Bella Craig reports.
Irish Times
15-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
How can businesses change their business model to support biodiversity?
Planting trees and putting beehives on the roofs of commercial building are significant gestures to improving biodiversity but bigger efforts to change business models, supply chains and operational behaviour will be needed to halt the loss of biodiversity across the globe. Three years ago Business for Biodiversity Ireland (BFBI) was founded with seed funding from the National Parks & Wildlife Services (NPWS) to help businesses recognise the impact they have on the natural world and start doing something about it. In 2024 that organisation became a social enterprise with continued core funding from the NPWS. It now aims to get more businesses to develop transition plans to become nature positive and stewards of nature. 'It's about pushing nature at the board level. Biodiversity loss is happening at the same time as climate change. They are two sides of the one coin. Our society relies on a healthy, functioning natural world,' says Iseult Sheedy of BFBI. READ MORE She admits the task is a demanding one. 'We have been working from a place where businesses have very little understanding of how they interface with biodiversity to doing double materiality assessments to developing a nature strategy for the company.' Double materiality assessments assess both the financial and the environmental/social impacts of business operations. Sheedy says that some businesses are starting to understand not only how their business impacts on nature but also their dependence on the natural world. 'There is a cohort of businesses – in the food and agricultural sector – which depend on nature, and unless they reinvest in nature positive actions their businesses won't survive,' says Emer Ni Dhúill, an ecologist who is head of research at BFBI. One example is how orchard owners rely on bees to pollinate apple flowers for a good apple harvest. SAP Landscapes is one company which has become more aware of the wider context of nature in its work developing green infrastructure. 'We are seeing rising client interest in biodiversity and nature-based solutions,' says its commercial director Paul Giles. Using the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan as a guide the landscape company has begun to integrate wetlands into sites and increase native trees and shrubs in planting schemes. 'There is a three-stage process that businesses engage with. They do an assessment to understand their negative impact on the natural world. Then they take steps to avoid and minimise these impacts and then they invest in restoration and regeneration,' says Ní Dhúill. Sheedy adds: 'We can't have an economy full of organisations built around profit only. We need mechanisms where reinvesting in nature happens.' According to Sheedy, some businesses – in farming and food, construction and development sectors – have been thinking about these issues for a while, as have value-driven organisations who do voluntary reporting. 'But we'll eventually come to a tipping point where all businesses will have to engage,' she adds. The change in language from corporate social responsibility to environmental social governance (ESG) within business has been a significant step in how companies perceive themselves and their wider commitments to society. ESB Networks was a founding member of the community of practice of BFBI. The State organisation published its biodiversity strategy, Networks for Nature, in September 2024. This policy statement outlines the company's commitments to environmental protection during the development, maintenance and operations of its infrastructure and assets. The group is currently drawing on technical expertise on assessments, tool kits and metrics from BFBI to help it comply with new reporting regimes, including the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. Those working in this space are, however, concerned that recent proposed delays to and simplifications of requirements for businesses to comply with the CSRD might slow down engagement from businesses in nature-positive strategies. Announced by the European Commission in February, this so-called Omnibus package recommends postponing the application of the CSRD reporting requirements by two years for many companies which were due to report for the first time in 2026 for the 2025 financial year. Furthermore the proposals recommend that the large companies which were required to prepare sustainability reports in 2025 for the financial year of 2024 are given longer period to do so and with less detail than previously requested. Commenting on the announcement in February, Irish law firm McCann Fitzgerald said: 'The Omnibus proposals, if implemented, are hugely significant. The commission estimates that the number of companies in scope will be reduced by 80 per cent.' Meanwhile, some universities have begun educating business students on the importance of biodiversity for business. Sheedy teaches organisational change for a sustainable future to second-year undergraduate students at the school of business in Trinity College Dublin. 'It's about understanding the political, economic and social reasons for the environmental crisis and a history around how business models were formed and need to change,' she says. Assistant professor of business and nature Catherine Farrell, an ecologist, teaches fourth-year business students in Trinity College. 'The course looks at the innate value of nature, how businesses impact on and depend on nature, why businesses need to work with nature and the benefits of doing so.' The students have shown an appetite for this learning, and as part of their final year research they work with businesses to map their nature positive actions. These businesses include A & L Goodbody; Chartered Accountants Ireland, Dundrum Shopping Centre and Hibernia Real Estate. The timing of introducing these modules on the natural world into business schools coincides with the rise in nature-related disclosures within the business community such as the aforementioned CSRD. Martha O'Hagan, the director of undergraduate programmes in the school of business at TCD, argues that it is essential to have ecologists teaching business students. 'Nature is critical infrastructure which provides clean water, clean air, flood mitigation and its damage is a very realistic risk for businesses.' Farrell adds: 'There have been cases where businesses have invested in tree plantings that never happened in an unregulated unstandardised approach, which led to many instances of greenwashing.' By teaching business students the importance of monitoring, reporting on and verifying inventions in nature, such greenwashing should be avoided in the future. 'They have to think seriously and understand what is the right thing to do. Finance that is misdirected is a lost opportunity for nature,' she says. While there has been a lot of attention on climate targets, the global biodiversity framework 2022 nature positive targets for 2030 should give the natural world more traction, Farrell says. 'And the restoration of nature through rewetting peatlands, planting trees and regenerations seagrass in marine environments can all help achieve reductions of carbon-dioxide emissions.' Trinity school of business has launched a pilot project to give corporates opportunities to directly fund nature initiatives on farms in Ireland. From September to December 2024, the project funded the building of 22 ponds on land owned by farmers in the Farming for Nature Network. Future projects will focus on improving depleted grasslands, putting in new hedgerows and woodlands.
CNA
13-05-2025
- Politics
- CNA
CNA938 Rewind - A Letter to Myself: Dignity Kitchen's Koh Seng Choon supports the differently-abled with grit and gratitude
CNA938 Rewind - A Letter to Myself: Dignity Kitchen's Koh Seng Choon supports the differently-abled with grit and gratitude Koh Seng Choon is the founder of Project Dignity, a social enterprise that has been equipping vulnerable and differently-abled individuals with skills and employment since 2010. Seng Choon shares how his parents' example of selfless giving despite their own financial hardship, planted the seeds of compassion in him. He also shares how the tenacity he gained as a cash-strapped student in the UK continues to fuel his drive to create practical solutions for the challenges faced by the differently-abled people in his care. 34 mins CNA938 Rewind - No new inroads by the opposition this GE2025 The People's Action Party secured 87 out of 97 parliamentary seats, while opposition parties didn't make new inroads in this General Election. Daniel Martin and Justine Moss speak with Dr. Reuben Ng, Behavioural and Data Scientist at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS. 17 mins CNA938 Rewind - How should you dispose of your PMD batteries? The police are investigating an incident involving a suspicious-looking bag with wires found in Queenstown early Sunday morning (11 May). Security checks established that the item in the bag was a battery from a personal mobility device. Daniel Martin and Justine Moss speak with William Lin, Director of Maximal SG, about proper PMD battery disposal. 11 mins
