Last Friday and Saturday was our North Island Road Freight Seminar, while we’ve yet to undertake a formal survey, early indications are it was another highly successful event with some 200 people having a great time.
The focus on cost, economics and financial literacy seemed to hit the mark. For me, a real highlight was keynote speaker Mark Law. Mark was one of the first responders flying a helicopter to rescuing people during the 2019 Whakaari/White Island volcano eruption.
I’m not sure why it took listening to Mark for this to happen to me, but it certainly changed my own perception and thinking around personal risk. I’ve also been enjoying listening to the latest “Your Brain on Risk” episode of In the Driver’s Seat Podcast with Greg Murphy and neuroscientist Nathan Wallis.
The other highlight of the event was our awards, and I think Hayley Alexander summed it up perfectly while accepting the Women in Transport Award. Hayley selflessly said this was a win for all women in transport. There were multiple quality nominees in every category and it was good to recognise, acknowledge and celebrate so much good that’s happening throughout our industry.
This week I’ve been part of the TyreWise contingent attending a conference in Melbourne.
TyreWise is the is New Zealand’s first regulated product stewardship scheme, which tracks tyres via a network of registered participants, throughout their life cycle, to ensure tyres are recycled and repurposed into other useful product. It was created prevent millions of tyres ending up landfill, being illegally stockpiled or dumped each year.
The conference has been described as a “pivotal moment” and “a catalyst for change towards a circular economy for tyres” with representation from most continents. Paul Kenyon, a BAFTA-winning BBC journalist is emcee and his story shows some of the shocking and scandalous practices going on involving tyre recycling.
According to some, apart from rugby there doesn’t seem to be a lot of things in New Zealand that aren’t better in Australia. However, I pleased to say the stewardship of the life of tyres is something we are doing much better and as Chair of the TyreWise Transport Technical Advisory Group I’m speaking on a panel to share New Zealand’s learnings with the view that other countries, particularly Australia can follow our lead,
Since starting in September last year, there have been about 78,000 collection trips made that have gathered up some 4.447m tyres. More stats about the tyres and what’s happening with them are here. I’ve been a strong supporter of the programme and provided our influence, experience and knowledge to this activity because unfortunately far too often transport services are not sufficiently engaged and integrated into the supply chain.
Too often we are insular in what we try and influence and change. In more cases than not the constraints we operate are ultimately in the hands of other parties. Whereas to a reasonably large degree, the TyreWise model revolves around taking a strong across supply chain approach. It’s only just come through its first year and it will evolve but I believe the fundamental principles offer excellent potential to extend into other transport activities. There are also opportunities for Transporting New Zealand to influence other strategic areas, in particular, the importance of willingness to pay, and the implementation of good transport practices with flow on effects to the wider industry.
It feels great to have one up on our cousins across the ditch and to have a good relationship so we can collaboratively share our learnings with not only them, but also other countries.
