Environmental Sustainability

Strategy Outline

Achievement of an environmentally sustainable New Zealand is a long-term goal that can only be brought about by changes in attitudes and behaviours across all aspects of New Zealand society including individuals, communities, business, manufacturing and government. People are generally unwilling to accept a fall in living standards to accommodate sustainable living and new or adapted technologies are required in some areas before this can be achieved. To make progress, changes in adult behaviour are required and therefore education efforts must be focussed on the adult public as well as in schools and universities.  This needs to be paralleled by changes in products and processes and more sophisticated marketing analysis and information. Most people have some understanding of key sustainability issues and many are ready and willing to take individual easy steps to address them when they are shown how to do so. A small improvement adopted across most of the nation will have a far greater impact than larger improvements achieved by a small group.

The Tindall Foundation will only fund initiatives whose primary objective is 'environmental sustainability’ under this strategy and will show preference for a limited number of initiatives that:

  • will achieve the largest possible scale of change
  • show leadership and provide frameworks and/or action steps that can be taken by groups or larger communities;
  • are well-managed and clearly communicate their goals to maximise the likely success of achieving change;
  • support the development of new technologies to support sustainable living;
  • have broad-based, committed support from key stakeholders and funders.