Fizzing at enterprising new job
Florence Van Dyke has a busy week ahead. Fresh off the plane from San Francisco, she’s moving to Wellington for her new role as the Head of Sustainability at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.
The 32-year-old has just completed a Master of Laws focused on business and climate change at UC Berkeley, California, on a Yvonne Smith Scholarship and an Advanced Degree Programme Scholarship through Berkeley.
The former corporate lawyer turned juice entrepreneur – forming Chia Sisters with her sister Chloe in Nelson – is excited about starting what she describes as her dream job, being part of the engine that makes Kiwi businesses more sustainable.
Van Dyke said the private sector could be a key driver in overcoming a lot of the world’s problems.
‘‘Businesses are responsible for a lot of the negative news in the world today, environmental crises and the growing inequality between rich and poor,’’ she said.
While that was ‘‘disheartening’’, it also meant that businesses were in the position to make huge amount of change. As sustainability head, she will be supporting exporters to ‘‘adopt sustainable and purpose led approaches as part of their international growth’’.
In a market in which consumers are increasingly aware of concepts like oil miles, and in which many prioritise and promote buying local, should we be exporting globally?
Some of our exports are services, she said, and products are being designed and freighted in a way that’s relatively low carbon. ‘‘There’s for example less carbon associated with freighting a bottle of drinks, for example, from here to California than there is from flying those drinks from LA to San Francisco, or even driving those drinks from New York to San Francisco. Sea freight is actually relatively low carbon.’’
New Zealand businesses need to be measuring their impact from both social and environmental lenses and reducing their carbon as much as possible, through measures such as avoiding fossil fuels, she said.
Van Dyke said sustainability had always been ‘‘close to her heart’’. The Van Dyke sisters’ drinks business is Zero Carbon, living wage certified, uses solar panels for energy, and is B-Corp (an in-depth ethical business framework) certified.
Having spent time in the US, she has seen the effects of climate change firsthand – when smoke from wildfires made its way down to Berkeley. In Arizona, she spoke at the Global Futures Institute at Arizona State University, Phoenix, where they have had week upon week of temperatures of 40C and deaths resulting from that.
Van Dyke said she would be maintaining active directorship at Chia Sisters.