Achilles Toitū Carbon Reduce Accreditation achieved

Hughes and Salvidge has been awarded the coveted Achilles Toitū Carbon Reduce Accreditation, demonstrating our commitment to reducing our carbon footprint, and in turn, our impact on the environment.

Our SHEQ Team worked towards this accreditation for four months towards the end of 2024, successfully achieving it in December. It will remain in place until June 2025, when we will undergo an annual surveillance audit, and pay an annual fee in order to continue the certification.

The annual audit will require us to supply all of our fuel usage figures, including those for plant, generators and vehicles, the waste quantities produced at all of our sites, and the gas and electric usage at our offices.

Hughes and Salvidge Environmental Advisor, Lily Timney, led the accreditation efforts. She said: “This year we are introducing a new digital software for our site supervisors and managers, which will provide more accuracy in tracking our fuel and waste exports from sites.”

Since joining Hughes and Salvidge last year, Lily has changed the carbon emissions inputting process so that they are tracked per project. This allows us to review how efficient we are with each project, as well as monitor a project's environmental goals. 

The Achilles Toitū Carbon Reduce Accreditation is an internationally-recognised carbon verification and reduction programme that is accepted by governments, certification bodies, regulators and the investment community.

Developed by New Zealand climate scientists, the programme supports businesses of all sizes to build best practice capability on carbon, achieve long-term sustained carbon action, and report scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions with confidence. Toitū Carbon Reduce organisations achieve a world-leading average 30% emissions reduction within four years, and 50% emission reduction within six years.

Independent Achilles-qualified auditors verify each company’s carbon inventory in accordance with international standards such as ISO 14064-1, ISO 14067 or PAS 2050. This independent verification will enable us to credibly demonstrate that we are managing climate change risk and carbon efficiency, which is a huge plus for customers considering utilising our services.

Other benefits of holding the Toitū Carbon Reduce certification include:

• Gaining an understanding of your carbon footprint and clear insights into key areas for improvement.

• Collaboration with others in the industry to further improve performance.

• Enables us to demonstrate that we’re being proactive, and that we’re committed to climate action with third-party verified GHG inventory compliance.

• Allows us to reduce operational costs with savings gained through reduced use of energy, fuel, and materials.

• We’ll benefit from automated reporting with pre-calculated government emission factors.

Lily added: “I’m very pleased with how the accreditation process went, especially considering it was my first year in the role. I’m looking forward to the future when we can hopefully achieve more carbon reduction goals. Between 2022-23 and 2023-24, Hughes and Salvidge achieved a 455.16 tCO2e reduction of carbon emission, which is fantastic, and something we definitely want to build on going forwards.”

Check out our Green Hands initiative, which forms our internal environmental strategy and action plan.