Part 2: How to build a better clothing industry, for everyone Clothes Neither you nor I, but our washed-out clothes: shirts, kameezes, and briefs under the starry sky on the clothesline whisper with each other… ~Bankim Let There is no sugar coating the seismic disruption the pandemic has created for the clothing industry. New Zealand, small and remote, is in a unique position to build a better...
Anyone who believes in indefinite growth on a physically finite planet is either mad, or an economist – Kenneth Boulding If you’ve read the NZ Productivity Commission’s milestone 2018 report Low-emissions economy, you’ll know it’s a widely-researched 600-page response to various climate imperatives. Repeatedly, it flags population and economic growth as causes of rising greenhouse gas...
Under the banner The systems that got us here have failed, acclaimed business commentator Rod Oram recently shared his insightful stock-take on many things, and lamented, Too often we can’t even agree a simple set of facts about a problem so our chances of solving it are minimal. An intriguing example was last year’s public spat on RNZ between two economics big-hitters: Kate Raworth (of...
Slowly but surely, New Zealand businesses are turning their minds to electrifying their fleets. Some are already on their way: in 2016, 30 of our biggest companies pledged to transform 30 percent of their vehicles to EVs by 2019. It hasn’t necessarily all been straightforward, however. This paper, ‘Building an Electric Fleet’, distils the experiences of a number of trail blazing New Zealand...
Just over a year ago, Pure Advantage published an opinion piece entitled First World Travel, Third World Facilities. In it, I argued that the long-distance bus industry could play a small, but important, role in reducing New Zealand’s transport carbon footprint. It highlighted key factors which hinder greater use of this transport mode. A version of this article was then published on the Greater...
There’s no beating around the bush. We know that cars produce emissions: transport as a sector produces nearly 20 percent of our country’s emissions, and private vehicles make up 12 percent of that, so we’re dealing with a significant chunk of CO2 and other nasty gases here. We also know that climate change is real, it’s happening and we need to change our behaviour to mitigate the effects and...
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