The Look is committed to promoting sustainability. Concern for the environment and promoting a broader sustainability agenda are integral to The Looks activities and the management of the organisation. We aim to follow and to promote good sustainability practice, to reduce the environmental impacts of all our activities and to encourage our clients and partners to do the same. We seek to model our policy in accordance with the United Nations Sustainable Development Partnership (UNSDP).
Principles
Our Sustainability Policy is based upon the following principles:
- To comply with, and exceed where practicable, all applicable legislation, regulations and codes of practice.
- To integrate sustainability considerations into all our business decisions.
- To ensure that all staff are fully aware of our Sustainability Policy and are committed to implementing and improving it.
- To minimise the impact on sustainability of all office and transportation activities.
- To make clients and suppliers aware of our Sustainability Policy, and encourage them to adopt sound sustainable management practices.
- To review, annually report, and to continually strive to improve our sustainability performance.
- To work towards a Zero Carbon target.
Why move towards Carbon Zero?
- To Future proof our business for the transition to a low carbon economy.
- Continue our sustainability journey by creating a great story to share with our customers and stakeholders.
- Be a business leader and influencer that invests in New Zealand’s resilience story.
- Place emission reductions at the forefront of your strategic decision making.
- Express our business’s values & increase customer and employee loyalty.
- Save money – many things we do to reduce our footprint will result in a positive. impact on our bottom line.
Practical steps
In order to put these principles into practice we will:
Travel
- Encourage our team to use public or cycle as forms of transport when commuting to work.
- Offset the carbon footprint of any air travel conducted by purchasing carbon credits with tickets.
- Avoid physically travelling to meetings etc where alternatives are available and practical, such as using teleconferencing, video conferencing or web cams, and efficient timing of meetings to avoid multiple trips. These options are also often more time efficient, while not sacrificing the benefits of regular contact with clients and partners.
- Where truck or vehicle transport is required, encourage the use of modern, fuel efficient vehicles of minimal size for the applicable job.
- We’ve committed to investigating the use of EVs for our short distance travel around Auckland.
Purchase of equipment and consumption of resources
- Use recycled paper for all office printing.
- As far as possible arrange for the reuse or recycling of office waste, including paper, computer supplies and redundant equipment.
- Use energy efficient electrical devices, such as LED lighting, energy rate staff room and laundry equipment.
- Ensure that timber furniture and any other timber products are recycled or from well-managed, sustainable sources and are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.
- Purchase fair-trade and/or organic beverages.
Environmental Policies
The Look has a strong interest in ensuring New Zealand maintains and enhances its clean green image. Both Company Principals are passionate about marine related activities, hence we support environmentally focused local charities:
- Support of the Sustainable Coastlines Charity through product donations to their annual charity auction.
- Financial support for the Live Ocean Charity
- Ensure that any associates that we employ take account of sustainability issues in their advice to clients.
- Include a copy of our Sustainability Policy in all our proposals to clients.
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Waste reduction initiatives
Our waste reduction policy is driven by the principles of:
“Refurbish, Rehome or Recycle”.
This is demonstrated through the following process: If staging furniture, linen and accessories go out of fashion or are uneconomic to refresh, we:
- Rehome. Donate to charity – specifically the Vision West Charitable Trust. Linen and other furniture items should the no longer be economic to refinish.
- Rehome. Gift to the SPCA – we annually donate towels and blankets that are no longer show home standard to the SPCA.
- Rehome. Sell – our furniture items are high quality and desirable to people who refinish them then on sell. While not economically viable for us to do, it is nice to see items going to good homes.
- Refinish. We have arrangements with upholsterers to refinish soft furnishings and cabinet makers to refinish our hard furnishings.
- Recycle. Not all items are viable to refinish and sometimes they must be disposed of. Hence, we have service agreements with Reclaim, Metal recycling specialists and Waste Management, to remove and recycle items that we cannot re home or refinish.
Other Environmental Initiatives
The Look has a strong interest in ensuring New Zealand maintains and enhances its clean green image. Both Company Principals are passionate about marine related activities, hence we support environmentally focused local charities:
- Support of the Sustainable Coastlines Charity through product donations to their annual charity auction.
- Financial support for the Live Ocean Charity
Human Policies
The Look is an equal opportunity employer. We will not discriminate and will take affirmative action measures to ensure against discrimination in employment, recruitment, advertisements for employment, compensation, termination, upgrading, promotions, and other conditions of employment against any employee or job applicant on the bases of race, colour, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, veteran's status, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.
We support global efforts to reduce inequality and inequitable outcomes. Poverty is a global problem, and all organisations and nations should work to reduce the harm it causes.
Child and Forced Labour
The Look takes a zero-tolerance approach to either child or forced labour. Child labour policy is based on the principles set out in the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions 138 and 182 and also national laws.
The Look supports the United Nations and ILO conventions specifying:
- All actions concerning the child shall take full account of his or her best interests.
- The right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation, from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or interferes with the child’s education, or is harmful to a child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.
The Look undertakes the following actions to ensure no child labour occurs within our company, our suppliers and our contractors by conducting the following actions: - International site visits to satisfy ourselves offshore suppliers are working in accordance with our policies.
- Communicating to all local supplier our sustainability policy.
- Requiring legal identification of all staff and contractors we engage.
Conclusion
Our sustainability policy is not viewed as a static vision, rather it develops over time as best practice changes, new issues emerge, new technologies enable better resource allocation and the world changes. We’ve committed to making this a “living document”, that all staff and agents engage in, that we promote to our clients and partners. We proactively search for better ways to be a more environmentally and socially sustainable organisation.
