We are committed to making a difference for our people, place and planet.

We respect the mana and importance of water we work with.

We aspire at all times to make a positive impact on our environment, our people, and the communities we serve.  We set about achieving this primarily through effective guardianship of our valuable water resources.

In fact, taking care of our environment is one of the pillars by which we measure our success as a business. So it’s something we take very seriously here at SWE.

As former Sustainable Business Council Executive Director Penny Nelson explained, “A growing number of businesses are looking beyond sustainability as compliance or risk management and are seeing growing opportunities from embedding good business practice… They understand the close connection between their own long-term success and having healthy communities and ongoing access to natural resources. You can’t have one without the other.”

We couldn’t agree more. It is important to us as a company to be able to hold our heads high and demonstrate we work in an environmentally-sound manner – and which we are proud has been validated by environmental awards.

As part of our ongoing commitment to our environment, here are just some of the initiatives we’ve been involved in recently:

Awards, recognition and accreditation

Recent recognition of our company includes:

• Winners of the “Best use of New Zealand natives” category of the Rapaura Springs Garden Marlborough“Best Garden” Awards (2018).
• Winners of the Cawthron Marlborough Environment Awards (2017) in the “Business Innovation” category.
• Finalists in the Cawthron Marlborough Environment Awards (2015) and commended with positive feedback from the judges.
• Shortlisted for the Irrigation New Zealand “Innovation in Irrigation Award” (2014).
• Supreme winner of the Marlborough Chamber of Commerce Business Excellence Awards (2013), winners of the “Innovation Award” and the “Adding Value to Marlborough” Award.

Accreditation

We held Toitū carbonzero certification from 2017-2025 – and we also hold the following accreditations which further substantiate our commitment to quality, health and safety, environmental  standards:

• ACC Workplace Safety Management Practices Secondary Accreditation
• Marlborough District Council Health and Safety Pre-Qualification Approval
• IrrigationNZ Member and Blue Tick accredited (all our work meets the standards set by IrrigationNZ)

Dams and water storage solutions

• We actively encourage our clients to consider water storage facilities / dams for enhanced climate resilience.
• As well as having completed a number of large scale new dam projects, we have also audited existing dams, where either we or our client believe it is performing under-par. In one such case (based on measurements taken prior to the project) we estimated that the client’s dam was losing 25% of its 42,000m3 capacity. This roughly corresponded to 58 days of watering for 10 hectares of grapes (18m3 per hectare per day). Following our remediation project, this water is no longer being lost and can now be used to irrigate their vines.

Waste and recycling

As well as a strong and effective internal approach to waste minimisation and recycling we are proud to also support the efforts of our clients.

We have offered recycling services for our clients since 2011. In 2011, we purchased the first dripline (plastic pipe for vineyard irrigation) recovery machine in New Zealand and developed a relationship with a plastic recycler. This allowed us to offer a dripline recovery service, rewinding dripline into tightly packaged coils for reprocessing. Vine covers and netting can also be collected for recycling.

We have also been involved in industry pilots to recycle and reuse polyvinyl chloride (“PVC”) and polyethylene (“PE”) materials from vineyards and projects around Marlborough.  See our news story here for more details about this initiative.

Together this has a major impact on the waste streams and environmental impact of the wine industry in Marlborough.

SmartAudit

We have completed our proprietary ‘SmartAudits’ on thousands of hectares worth of vineyards – identifying potential water and power savings in every audit (of up to 50%) for our clients.

The SWE team continually look for ways to take the potential savings and reduced wastage identified by a SmartAudit and communicate good environmental practices and projects that will inspire our clients to look at how good environmental management makes for good business. Measuring and monitoring help determine more accurately how much water to use (considering soil type and grape variety) – rather than just setting the timer. It is about creating a refined approach that conserves water, saves power (less pumping) and provides bespoke growing conditions for each variety.

As experts in water conservation we are well positioned to lead by example through measurement analysis and solution development case studies when it comes to environmental management. We strive to share our knowledge and commitment to social environmental management through sharing knowledge and best practice at industry conferences – such as Romeo Bragato Conference 2015, the Winery Engineering Association Conference 2016 – and community presentations, like the Cawthron Marlborough Environment Awards field days 2017.

Donating time and money

Some of the other ways we get involved in our community include volunteering our time and donating good and services to worthy environmental causes:

• Department of Conservation: Stephen Leitch has been involved with Department of Conservation planting at Stephens Island (Marlborough Sounds), trapping at Coal Island (Fiordland), and assistance with removal of wilding pines (Marlborough).
• Te Hoiere Bat Recovery Project: Stephen is actively involved with Te Hoiere Bat Recovery Project – a combined effort between Forest and Bird members from Nelson-Tasman and Marlborough and community volunteers. Volunteers like Stephen clock up around 80 hours a month checking 500 traps across 150 hectares – to decrease the populations of rats, stoats, possums and feral cats that threaten the livelihood of the local long-tailed bat population.
• “The Great Drain Game”. We provided the funds, materials and labour to get the project completed, and Marlborough District Council provide the freshwater educator to deliver the programme in schools. It has since been in use at community events such as ‘The Amazing Eco-Race’ and school galas. See more about this on our News page.

“We work, live and play in Marlborough. We want to make it a better place for our staff, our clients and our future generations.”