Our values
Being green in an industry which makes a profit by burning fossil fuels and creating a carbon footprint by way of road miles around New Zealand doesn’t sound like a simple task to achieve. With plenty of positive effort anything is possible.
After living abroad for a few years and travelling parts of world, I quickly understood why New Zealand was such an attractive place to live or visit. After realising I had seen more of the world than my own backyard, I made a conscious effort to showcase New Zealand to the rest of the world. Starting off with my overseas friends and eventually tourists through my new venture Ezy Driver, I wanted to show off New Zealand’s clean green image so people could see the sort of lifestyle that I grew up to love.
After a few years of operating Ezy Driver, the most common thing tourists notice is simply how tidy the place is. Whether it be the green spaces, friendly people, condition of the roads, tidy footpaths or nice homes. Visitors always make these honest comments which always reminds me how lucky I am to live here and encourages me to continue showing off this great place.
Our positive reputation as a safe, green country has gone viral. Tourist numbers have steadily increased over the years and our population has grown rapidly since the 90’s. New Zealand has quickly modernised itself and is now a highly regarded exporter of goods and services to the world. Our export dollars are positive for the economy and amazing at creating opportunities for its citizens and government.
The cost of quick economic, population and tourist growth adds immediate pressure on our environment. It’s easy to see that the roads getting busier by the day to the point people are moving from the cities to the regions just to avoid the jams. Green spaces are quickly turning into new suburbs overnight yet still unable to satisfy housing demand. The challenge for every person and business in New Zealand is to continue making amazing economic progress by taking risks and creating opportunities while at the same increasing our sustainability and reducing our environmental impact.
I am proud to say that New Zealanders in general are more aware of the environment than ever before and leading the way in terms of how we live and do business. Businesses like Ezy Driver understand that being green is the only way to thrive in business. Being green is not a cost or burden on our business, it only enhances our reputation.
People from over the world are quickly becoming more aware of the impact of carbon footprint created by international travel. New Zealand proximity for overseas visitors quickly puts it at a big disadvantage and needs to be smart about how to maintain the optimum volume and quality of visitor. Customers are increasingly making more conscious efforts about where they travel starting to choose smarter green choices of business to deal. These are often their choice of airline with newest most fuel efficient fleet to Hotels with green awards or their chosen brand of water with biodegradable packaging.
With sustainability now a top priority, Ezy Driver is proactive at creating efficiencies on it’s day to day activities. Sustainability is integrated into our long term financial planning and every important business decision we make. See some of our projects and small things we are doing below that is helping us to evolve into a leading green operator in the transport & tourism industry.
Glass bottles. We are starting to phase out plastic ones as glass is more easily recycled plus we are now actively monitoring usage
Paperless internal systems. All our invoicing, job sheets and booking systems are app or web based
Our office uses Mercury Energy as its power provider it’s generation is from 100% renewable sources
When different customers book a matching time and location we offer free upgrades to larger vehicles should they be happy to share a single vehicle
Qualmark member. We have partnered with Qualmark for guidance and to ensure we are meeting best industry practice
Euro 5 diesel fleet. Investing more up-front on newer high spec vehicles pays for itself environmentally in the long run with reduced emissions, better fuel economy and passenger safety standards.
West Auckland concessionaire with Auckland Council. This ensures we meet their best practices and pay a levy for each visitor. This offsets any environmental damage and helps create better amenities in the Waitakere Ranges.
Carbon offset scheme through Stripe Climate at as 30-December-2021. This latest initiative has been in the making for quite some time and we are proud to finally have this integrated into our Xero card payment portal. We can now measure and offset our carbon footprint while enabling customers to be part of this important initiative.
The team at Ezy Driver thanks you for your continued support.