For immediate release
28 November 2004
Mercury Energy wins Business Ethics Award
Mercury Energy has won the Business Ethics Award at Management Magazine's Top 200 Awards, held last night.
The energy retailer took out the award for its work towards Enviro-Mark accreditation and its Beat Your Bill winter
energy saving campaign, which rewarded customers directly for power saving during the Target 10% campaign.
Judges Dr Roger Spiller and Dick Hubbard awarded Mercury Energy for positively influencing customers and the wider
community to act in an environmentally conscious way.
"It is walking the talk through its internal practices and using its marketing strategy to make a difference by saving
money and the environment," they commented.
Mercury Energy General Manager John Foote is thrilled to have won the award which follows becoming the first New Zealand
energy player to achieve the Platinum Enviro-Mark level, which is the second highest of five levels of the international
standard of environmental performance administered by Landcare Research.
"Working towards Enviro-Mark accreditation was a way to benchmark existing practises with an international standard," he
said.
"There is an increasing commercial focus on sustainability and we are pleased to have taken on the challenge and
achieved this accreditation.
"To win the Business Ethics Award as well is a mark of the real commitment our staff have shown over the past year."
The accreditation process for Mercury Energy started in January with the development of an Environmental Impact Report,
which identified areas where improvements could be made.
Extensive changes were implemented within the office environment. One of the significant changes was the removal of
personal rubbish bins, replaced with a small desk box for paper recycling and one medium sized non-paper bin per office
area. The results were positive with Mercury seeing a reduction in recyclable paper to landfill waste of 1.6 tonnes in
just over a three-month period.
Mercury Energy also committed 10% of its external marketing budget to promote energy efficiency messages and ran a
highly successful Beat Your Bill campaign over the last winter. This resulted in over $4 million in rebates being
credited back to customers who beat their winter power bill from the year prior.
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