Peter Eising, Managing Director Pacific Environments NZ Ltd, shares his thoughts on opportunities presented by COVID-19
"During lockdown, NZ is measurably cleaner, with minimal emissions, towns & countryside with less waste, & many of us enjoying a more relaxed life.
How can we grasp the positive gains while recognising the hardships we’ve endured, and find a balance that better supports our planet?
The solution starts with me: taking the positives of lockdown & embodying them in our ‘new normal.’ Opportunities exist to re-think & re-action our work & lives, & the impact each of us makes on our environment.
Walk & cycle to work more often, encourage & enable staff to work from home, choose designs & materials based on energy used & reused, reduced waste, use edible landscapes. Enhance our ‘city of villages’. It’s all about people’s well-being and the well-being of our environment.
The changes we’re experiencing now must motivate the changes we need to make, to lead to a better environment, to a better place we inhabit.
Rather than recreating what we’ve left behind, the opportunity is to learn & rebuild our new lives in the spaces that will support our learnings, and recognise we’re living in our ‘new normal’."