New Zealand Celsias

Member Since

1450 days ago

Location

Auckland, New Zealand

Employer

North Shore City Council

Website

www.michaelfield.net.nz

About Me

Michael Field is a sustainability practitioner, specialising in corporate sustainability, with more than 10 years experience specifically in this area. He was previously National Sustainability Manager for Interface Inc in Australia, one of the most highly regarded sustainable companies in the world. During that time he was recognised as one of the top ten sustainability champions worldwide, and the Australian business went from 190th place on the companies’ sustainability measurement framework, to first place, winning the global EcoSense Award in 2003.

In order to help raise awareness of sustainability issues, Michael was also involved in a number of research projects with partners including the University of South Australia, Department for Administration and Information Services, Zero Waste South Australia and the South Australian Office for Sustainability on projects from supply chain management and rental and leasing modelling to product stewardship.

As well as implementing and coordinating sustainability programmes from sustainable manufacturing to lifecycle analysis of projects at Interface, Michael was responsible for staff engagement and education. Sustainability training and education is an area he is passionate about and has always been active in. Currently Michael is a regular public speaker at national and international conferences on topics from corporate sustainability to climate change and a guest lecturer at Massey Universities Albany campus.

In New Zealand, Michael has worked in the consultancy field offering advice and technical expertise on sustainable development and management issues to companies such as Genesis Energy, Bank of New Zealand and Vodafone. In particular he gave guidance on sustainability framework design, sustainability reporting and verification, green material specification, environmental auditing, sustainable procurement, green building frameworks, policy development, carbon accounting and legislation advice to government.

As well as designing, writing and running Green Building Assessment Tools Workshops for the Sustainable Business Network, Michael was an establishing board member of the New Zealand Green Building Council, and led the team responsible for researching and recommending a single assessment tool for green buildings for adoption across the country. He was also a contributing author to A Deeper Shade of Green, a book on best practice for sustainability in the built environment

In addition to this work, Michael has had more than 20 papers and articles published on a range of topics from corporate social responsibility reporting to sustainable business, greenwashing and water scarcity. He is regularly asked for comment by media, and was recently interviewed by The Independent as a result of his experience as a sustainability practitioner and his current role as Sustainability Manager at North Shore City Council, for an article titled “When ‘sustainable’ means saving the bottom line”.

In it Michael detailed savings of more than $1.2m over the past year through the council’s citywide and in-house sustainability initiatives, and reinforced that sustainability is about business efficiency, with the added bonus of having positive environmental outcomes.

Quotes

It's not all about 'being green', it's about sound business practices leading to greater efficiencies - the positive environmental benefits are just a great by-product.

Links

• Corporate Sustainability Website by Michael Field, 
• My sustainability blog, 
• NZ Herald Article on Cost Savings through Sustainability.