It's often easier for businesses to talk about sustainability than figure it out - a gap in the market that caught the eye of Wellington educationist Tina Wilks.
She also began to wonder who was training the next generation to draw up a carbon footprint or identify damaging business practice.
So last month a subsidiary of Wilks' online learning company, Symbiont, introduced what it believes is the first course on workplace sustainability for secondary school-aged pupils.
Futureworx 1, an internet-based course for 16- to 19- year-olds, was sparked by the message that Wilks kept getting from her business contacts.
"They'd say, ?I'm going for this government contract and I've been asked to put in a section on the sustainable practices that our business uses, and I don't know what to put in. I don't know if we're doing any'," Wilks said.
Pupils on the course, which earns NCEA credits, learn about managing and recovering resources, aiming for zero waste, and how to do a sustainability audit.
They also learn that sustainability is about wooing customers as much as reducing costs.
"Customers are becoming much more savvy," Wilks said.
"They've got a choice over a business which is striving to be more sustainable and then another business which just throws all their rubbish down at the landfill."
At the end of the course, pupils put together a sustainable project for the community or a workplace.
"They don't have to actually present it to the mayor or a business," said Wilks, but the skills they learnt better prepared them to go straight into the work force.
In keeping with the sustainability theme, Wilks moved Symbiont to Otaki's Clean Tech Centre in August last year.
The move made perfect sense, she said.
"We had an opportunity of being situated in an environment which is full of new innovation in the sustainable area."
- ? Fairfax NZ News
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