When we hear someone in a navy-blue suit shout, “we need to kickstart the economy” it usually means that a piece of the environment pays the price. Meanwhile, when someone cries “we need to save the planet” Big Industry rolls its eyes.
Why is this considered the great ultimatum? That we must destroy one to improve the other?
This suggests that economic prosperity exists in a vacuum, separate from the natural world. It doesn’t. As highlighted by broadcaster Paul Harvey, our environment is the very foundation of our economy: “Despite all our accomplishments, we still owe our existence to a six-inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.”
We’ve been lucky here in Aotearoa New Zealand where concepts of Papatūānuku (Mother Earth) and kaitiakitanga (guardianship) are more familiar in our culture and even taught in schools from a young age. For the most part, we’re closer to the understanding that nature is a living being that deserves protection and respect. But in order for our economy to thrive, we need to remember these principles.
A symbiotic relationship
The economy and the environment are often talked about in silo from each other, but they share an inherently symbiotic, systemic relationship.
Consider the snow on the mountains. In spring, that snow melts and flows down into the rivers, filling the water table, providing essential water for farmers to irrigate their crops and contribute to industry. Destroy the conditions that allow snow to accumulate (say removing the shelterbelts from the plains below) and you unknowingly jeopardise the entire agricultural ecosystem downstream.
Let’s look at an example from the sea – bottom trawling. When this fishing practice continually digs up delicate deep-sea coral habitats, it sets off a chain reaction: no habitat means no marine life and, eventually, no fish left to trawl and sell.
Impacts don’t only come from what we extract, but also from what we release. The ozone hole over Antarctica, caused in the 1980s by industrial chemicals once used in fridges and aerosol sprays (CFCs), shows that byproducts from one industry can travel far beyond the source.
Or take something closer to home in today’s context. Fuel. When transport costs rise, it doesn’t just affect the price at the pump. It flows through the entire system, from the cost of getting fertiliser to farms, to moving materials through construction sites, to delivering goods into supermarkets. Disrupt one input, and every downstream stage absorbs the shock. Over time, this compounds into higher cost of living pressures across the economy, not because any one sector failed, but because the system is tightly coupled and fragile.
All of these examples reinforce the same point: Everything is connected. Industry relies on its natural cycles. When one is impacted, the other cannot continue as normal and the effects are never contained.
I believe New Zealand industry is important, necessary, and has so much potential for greatness. We are leaders in agriculture, tourism, food, technology and more. We need growth and progress. In order for our industries to continue, the opportunity now is to start building from the reality of their interdependence, rather than constantly trying to fix what was never fully connected in the first place.
The missing core
Right now, it feels like our industry is growing around a missing core. Like a web that keeps being repaired without ever being redesigned. And when pressure or demand hits, those cracks become impossible to ignore.
By contrast, a koru begins small and spirals outward, getting wider as it grows. A nautilus shell is built from a small spiral growing around a central core in scale and harmony.
We must adopt a different mindset, viewing resources less as finite commodities to be used up, and more like nature does: where every end is simply a transition to a new phase.
This thinking is often described as the Cradle to Cradle mindset, something I personally live by and a philosophy we’ve embedded into our thinking at Autex. It’s an ongoing commitment to circularity and regeneration that thinks about what happens to a material at the end of its life from day dot. Not once we get there.
All businesses can benefit from recognising that a material on its own cannot be truly sustainable, it’s about the systems that surround it. We’ve seen so many fads over the years – Bread is the enemy! BPA is the enemy! Palm oil is the enemy! And, of course, plastic is the enemy! But plastic isn’t in fact the enemy, the ‘take-make-dispose’ approach towards it is.
Businesses making a difference
Embracing circular thinking doesn’t need a million-dollar R&D budget or a dedicated sustainability team. It can begin with simple questions: Where do we create unnecessary waste? Who can we collaborate with to extend the life of a product or material that would otherwise be thrown out?
Look at Hamilton-based saveBOARD, transforming complex packaging waste like coffee cups, cartons, and other plastics into low-carbon construction panels, using only heat and compression to divert waste back into the economy. To keep the loop even tighter, they allow customers to drop offcuts to their collection sites, creating a zero waste product. Even the most sustainable businesses can find ways to be more circular.
Another standout is New Zealand’s Cetogenix, whose Ceto-Boost technology transforms municipal wastewater and industrial waste into higher-yielding fuel for biogas plants, unlocking new energy sources while increasing carbon efficiency. Ceto-Boost also has potential to offer on-site management of organic waste, completely eliminating the need for off-site disposal.
Globally, Bluemethane is applying the same mindset by capturing methane present in wastewater before it reaches the atmosphere. They offer this technology on and off-site, allowing for on-site waste to be re-used for energy again. Companies like Cetogenix and Bluemethane are looking at solutions lying right in front of them – solutions that we often overlook in the process of trying to ‘think big’. If they can find value in wastewater and sludge, I’m confident many Kiwi businesses can find value in their own processes while doing good for the environment.
Like saveBOARD, Cetogenix, Bluemethane and many other businesses committed to real change, we don’t just want to make things ‘less bad’, we want to create the blueprint for a more prosperous New Zealand economy, one that sets the stage for future generations to thrive. Imagine if we, as a country, lead the world into this space, developing and exporting IP and future positive systems, revolutionising manufacturing as a force for good.
At Autex, we operate across construction, design, architecture, and agriculture. We know firsthand that the best solutions aren’t created by thinking, “Where can we add value?”, but rather, “Where is value being lost?”. By thinking more simply, we create better outcomes for business, environment, and personal health.
So, where do we go from here?
It’s not too late for us. We have the opportunity to rethink how we do business. We have the opportunity to use science, research, technology and policy to engineer systems that regenerate our environment to bring the snow back to the mountain and the coral back to the ocean floor.
The businesses best positioned for the future won’t necessarily be the biggest, but they will be the smartest. In Aotearoa, we’re scrappy, ambitious, and there’s two degrees of separation between every single person. Let’s harness these strengths to build a healthy economy that is, by design, healthy for us and our environment too.
