ecoportal blog

News, product updates, case studies and interesting sustainability stories from the ecoPortal team.

[ecoportal]

Saved searches

Saved searches are finally here! You can now save and update any search or analytic graph you create on registers. To make one, just make a search, an advanced search, or a graph (like normal). When you do, you should see a button to save the search appear, as shown below.

Clicking this lets you name your search and gives you the option to make the search available to others in your organisation. Once your search has a name you can then save it.

To load an existing saved search, open the saved search panel and simply click on your search. If you like, we can customise your register so that one of your saved searches can load by default when a register loads.

To alter an existing search, first load it and then make whatever changes you like. Once you have the search just how you like it you can update it by clicking the update button, or (if you want to keep the original search) save the search under a different name. 

Look out for our release next week when we add the ability to embed the analytic graphs from these saved searches onto pages and reports.

[ecoportal]

January Update: Register analytics

We are very proud to kick off 2015 by releasing the much anticipated 'register analytics'. The first thing you might notice is that we have overhauled registers to make them more useful, intuitive and fun to interact with. However the real show stealer is the brand new ability to quickly create visualisations of the data within registers.

Getting started

If you want to give it a try, start by going to any register. If there are tags or states on your content you might already notice visualisations showing statistics about these on the right. These graphs are interactive and clicking on them is a quick way to drill down to the content you are searching for. You can hide the graphs by clicking 'hide statistics' if you want more space for the register cards.

Filtering

To add filters (like you used to be able to), click on 'Advanced Search' which will open up a panel with two controls. Under 'add filter', you can choose the filters you would like to add to the search which then appear below the search bar.  You can then enter your specific criteria to apply the filter. Feel free to add as many filters as you like to really fine tune the results.

Visualise statistics about your data

To generate graphs from your results, use the select box under 'Visualise results' (shown after clicking 'Advanced Search') and choose the data category you want the visualisation to group by. After selecting one, the visualisation down bottom right will automatically change to display your data.

Combining filters and visualisations

Visualisations are computed taking into account any filters you have applied. Combining filters and visualisations is a powerful way to extract extremely useful business intelligence from ecoPortal. For example (depending on how your register is setup) you could use this to visualise the percentage of incidents that are in the ISO14001 category, that still have a red status, that were created in December. 

Give it a try, and if you have any questions or feedback please let us know.

Coming Soon

Today's release is just the tip of the iceberg of the new analytic functionality we plan on releasing in the near future. Watch this space for the next analytics update that allows searches to be saved and their visualisations to be embedded on pages and reports throughout ecoPortal. 

[ecoportal]

December Update: Search upgrade

The development team has been keeping very busy during the lead up to this holiday season working on new features and improvements to make ecoPortal better than ever. While we are super excited about these upgrades and really want to spill the beans, they still need a bit more time in development before we show them off.

However, we did not want to leave our users completely empty handed this holiday, so today we are proud to release Global Search!

With many of you amassing a lot of complex content, Global Search is the perfect way to find and access exactly what you want, as fast and simply as possible. Accessed by clicking the 'magnifying glass' icon up the top left corner of the screen, you can then type things such as titles, keywords and tags which then return all the relevant pages, reports, datasets and files that you have permissions to see. 

Here at ecoPortal, we are loving Global Search; it is a great time saver and we hope it speeds up your workflows too. For instance, if you want to find a page but are not sure what register it's in, global search will return results from all the registers. Also, if you want to download a file, but don't want to navigate away from the current page you are on, simply search for it. Clicking on the result will start downloading the file, leaving you free to continue working. 

Other Improvements and maintenance

We have also spent a lot of time polishing the backend of ecoPortal to make it faster, more stable and more usable. A list of some of the these improvements are as follows:

Edge cases around the sign up workflow have been resolved

More events recorded in the page log such as manually changed states, and batch permission changes

New icons, further theming and improved messages

Internal improvements and fixes to the search system

Fixes to register search

Tag filters only show when there are items in a register with tags

Further workflow fixes

Further customisation options

Browser compatibility fixes

Other miscellaneous bug fixes

[ecoportal]

October update, part 2

We get a lot of great ideas from our customers and this last week we have had the chance to work on many of them. Today we have released several small changes to ecoPortal that we hope make a big difference to your productivity.

Tags for pages and registers: Last week we introduced the tagging of files. Now you can also tag pages and then filter by those tags in registers. This should let you quickly find the content you want.

Count of pages on registers: Often it is useful to know how many pages there are in a register, or how many pages match your current search criteria. You can now see this information below the search controls on each register.

Advanced search of specific text fields: The search bar on registers has always searched every text field on the form component of pages. However in some cases you may only want to search one specific field for a term. Now you can. From the 'Advanced' drop down in registers, a search field can now be added for each specific text field. 

Voting: We have added the ability for users to be able to vote on pages. Get in touch with us if you want us to enable this for you, or create a new register with this enabled, for instance an 'idea register'.

'Created date' in addition to 'updated date': On registers and pages you should now be able to see the date a page was created, as well as the date it was last updated.

Year select option on the date picker: The date picker on events now lets you select years as well as months.

Infinite scroll on datasets: If you have lots of datasets, they should now autoload when you reach the bottom of the page, rather than having to click through multiple pages.

[ecoportal]

October update

Here at ecoPortal, (between moving into our new office!) our developers have been kept very busy working on many exciting features and improvements. Today we get to release two of these which are the redesigned file manager and the streamlined invite system. We are pretty excited about how they turned out and we hope you enjoy them. 

File Manager

The File Manager has had a complete visual overhaul as well as being packed with some new features like: 

File versioning: Files can now be updated by uploading a newer version. This is great if you need to update a file you have referenced on a lot of pages. Previously you would have had to go to each page, remove the old file and add the new one, but now you can simply find the file in the file manager, and update it. All the pages that reference it will now point to the latest version. A full version history is kept for each file allowing you to easily roll back to an older version if you so choose. 

Deeper file permissions: Within the file manager, each file now has the same permission options as pages do. You (as the creator of the file) will automatically get admin permissions. However, if you choose, you can add additional scopes (i.e. what departments or sites can see it), and additional roles (i.e. who can edit it) to each file. NB: as before, file permissions apply only to who can view and edit the file in the file manager and who can add the file to a page. Once a file is referenced on a page, anyone who can see that page can download that file, regardless of the file permissions.  

Powerful tag system / file explorer: We know that files can proliferate making it a nightmare to find the exact file you are looking for. That is why we upgraded the tag system and file navigation. It should now be easy to quickly find what you are looking for. 

We recommend that you tag all your files as you upload them, in a similar fashion to how you would place new files in folders. You can then click on tags from the tag selector or directly on the files to filter them.

Invite system

The invite system is still in the same place on the organisation admin page, but the workflow of inviting people to ecoportal has now been split into multiple steps and rethemed to make it easier and more logical. There are also some nice new features such as:

Personalised messages: You can now add a personal message to the email invites, but if you don't feel like it, you can stick with the default message.

Resend invites that haven't been opened: If someone has lost their invite before activating their account, there is an option to resend by clicking on the user's card on the organisation page.

Upload a csv of people to invite: If you have a large list of people to invite it may be quicker to use our new csv import function. The required format is shown below the tool on the page.

Other improvements

Expect another release with more features very soon! On top of the file manager and invite system we have also released a lot of other improvements and bug fixes as follows: 

Registers have been restyled. The main changes might not be noticeable yet as they will be gradually rolled out, but watch this space as registers should start to get a lot prettier ( as well as enabling us to build a few other cool/much requested features).

Notification settings can be changed directly from notification digest emails

The user is warned if there are changes that could be lost when closing the editor for part of a page

When attaching references to a page, you now have 3 options to control the amount of detail that is shown on the page.

This will become more useful over the next few months as the register themes are gradually rolled out.

There should be faster page loads for users belonging to many organizations

Changes to permissions now show up in the page log

Organization admin can now delete user comments from pages

Nicer messages when a page has been batch imported

Organization admins can now create roles

A new link to the organization page on the sidebar under tools

Default sort method is now configurable per-register by admins

Retheme of user and organisation menus down the bottom left

Bugfixes

Fix for ecoTable rendering when no subpages

Fixes around caching that would result in out of date user avatars and user names on the organization page

Default landing pages don't get redirected to if you don't have permission to them

Minor UI fixes for reference component with respect to state when state is disabled

Notification linking improvements

Fixed an issue when enter is pressed while filtering an organization's members

Fixed IE8/9 issue where the user attempts to upload multiple files in parallel

Deleting a component now updates the timestamps on its parent page

Fixed issue where a notification about a user with no name set can look odd

Fix for IE8 where ecoWheel javascript crashed under certain extreme conditions

Fix for IE8 report printing layout

Fix to image gallery component minimization

Safer loading of registers in the case of a desync (was causing register sorting issues)

ecoTable render fixes

[ecoportal]

August update

Today we are very excited to release our first round of upgrades since the huge overhaul several months ago.

New look Sidebar

One element we really wanted to include in our new look for the ecoportal was a sidebar with all the controls you might need for the current page. While it wasn't ready for our previous major release, it is now, and we are quite proud of how it turned out. It makes the page controls much more accessible, speeds up many tasks, displays important information like page activity, and if you want extra space you can easily hide it away. 

  Commenting on specific items

Being able to comment on what is going on, or what needs to happen is essential to collaboration and engagement. As usual, you can add your comments to the conversation on the page's activity log (which is now more visible with the new sidebar) but you can now also comment on specific items on the page. Try clicking the speech bubble icon on any component on a page to view or add comments specific to that item. 

  Scatter option in charts

A common request is more visualisation options for data. Today we add scatter plots to our lineup.

  Other improvements

There have been numerous other improvements including

A new option for ecotables is to use icons instead of text to get something that looks like this:

Numerous bug fixes and upgrades across all platforms

Much much more, if you have any questions get in touch with us. We would love to talk you through what we have been working on and how it can improve your workflows.

  Things to look forward to in the coming weeks

We have lots of new exciting things on their way! Here is a cross section of a few that you can expect in the very near future:

An updated file manager where you can update a file rather than having to replace it on all pages, as well as lots of other file management improvements

Improved invitation tools giving you more options around inviting new team members to the ecoportal

Integrating the idea tool with pages so you can finally have your own idea register as well as add ideas as references to other pages

A new help system to answer many of the questions you might have when using ecoPortal

Plenty more!

[ecoportal]

For those that missed it here is a video that covers most of the new features from our April release.

[ecoportal]

Perspectives of managing sustainability – where are we at?

6th International Life Cycle Management (LCM) Conference - Göteborg, Sweden

Last week, I attended the International LCM Conference (http://lcm2013.org/), which takes place every two years. Globally it is one of the leading conferences on environmental sustainability and has previously taken place in Copenhagen (2001), in Barcelona (2005), Zürich (2007), Cape Town (2009) and Berlin (2011). Life Cycle Management (LCM) deals with environmental impacts at all life cycle stages of a product. Ideally, suppliers work together to minimise negative impacts on the environment and therefore significantly improve the sustainability performance of the final product. There are a number of tools around that support companies to do so, such as the implementation of environmental management systems (EMS), supplier evaluation, product stewardship schemes, or life cycle assessment (LCA). Successful implementation of LCM initiatives leads to for example financial benefits, better risk management and also competitive advantage.

Sweden is very well-known for its low population density, reindeers and the Volvo cars, but also for being at the forefront of sustainability initiatives. IKEA is particularly proactive when it comes to working with suppliers and encouraging them to improve their environmental performance. In day-to-day life you can also see that Swedes bring their shopping bags to the supermarkets, have campaigns to encourage the use of reusable coffee cups and they are leading in recycling. For example, 99% of the household waste is either recycled or used for energy production. Passive houses which reduce the amount of energy consumption are not rare in cities all over the country. Organic plays an important role to Swedish consumers, not only when it comes to food, but also cotton. H&M, for example, is the world’s largest user of organic cotton.  So clearly, Sweden was a good choice as a host-country for a conference with a sustainability focus.

Like a Swedish “smorgasbord”, the conference was a great mix of representatives from industry, academics from research institutes and universities, and governments and NGOs. Over the three days, there were about 40 sessions with almost 200 oral presentations and approximately 160 posters, as well as a range of other formats such as themed lunch sessions, Pecha Kucha, seminars, exhibitions, workshops and plenty of opportunities for social interactions.

The conference theme “Perspectives of managing life cycles” was represented through the numerous topics such as business strategy and LCM, the role of communication in LCM, application of LCM in environmental policy; but also more in-depth topics focusing particularly on chemical assessment, management of biotic and abiotic resources; data exchange, labelling, sustainable supply chain, and seafood and fisheries.

It became clear that for many companies the motto “sustainability is business and business is sustainability” is what is driving them to implement environmental initiatives, and also encourages them to work with their suppliers up and down the value chain to improve the environmental performance of the final product.  André Veneman from AkzoNobel highlighted that an important part of their sustainability journey is not only reducing environmental impacts in their own operations, but working WITH suppliers, to reduce impacts caused by transport, packaging and end of life treatment. For them, sustainability is key, a core part, and not an add-on. And AkzoNobel is not alone with that attitude. We heard from Nicole Unger, from Unilever, that they encourage suppliers to have labelled products by 2020, an ambitious but not unrealistic goal.

Teresa Fogelberg, the Deputy Chief Executive of GRI, talked about the recently launched G4, which plays an important role as the global trend moves towards disclosure and reporting.  For some companies reporting might be important to gain trust and increase transparency, for others it is a license to operate in a particular market, or to inform investors and to learn about the risks.

What I learned after three days of extensive discussion with experts on various sustainability and LCM issues is that industry, particularly in Europe, wants to improve their environmental performance. They see it as a huge chance to distinguish themselves from competitors and also to simply do the right thing. They, increasingly, ask their suppliers to start their sustainability journey too, and here we see that LCM is not only for large corporates that are in the public, but that LCM is something every company has to integrate into their strategy.

It sounds very complex, and companies represented at the conference clearly showed where they are at and where they want to go in the future. They are asking sustainability professionals and researchers to help them on that journey.

I see ecoPortal as a solution for many of the hurdles they are facing right now. Be it an efficient way of collecting and storing data, making data visible and understandable for internal and external stakeholders, being transparent and engaging departments from within the company. Moreover, it is a tool not only applicable for a specific industry sector, rather it can be adapted to suit the requirements of individual  companies in any sector. I seriously believe we are well on track for doing the right thing ourselves, and helping others, to do the right thing too.

I am already looking forward to the next LCM conference in Bordeaux, France, in 2015. (Not only because of the social events and the wine, but to see how much progress we can make in the next two years).

[ecoportal]

June ecoPortal Update

Notification System & Digests

ecoPortal has got a lot smarter and a lot more configurable when it comes to receiving the notifications that you want, when you want them. Rather than just sending emails, all notifications are now logged per-user and viewable at any time online in the new messaging centre.

We introduced "digests" to connect up this system with email notifications. Each digest represents a set of notification types, and when you want to receive those notifications via email. These are completely configurable per-user, but come with sane defaults - expiry dates and review dates come through daily; assignments, comments and related messages will be batch collected into notices sent at maximum every 15 minutes.

Want all notices to come through daily? Weekly? Not at all? No problem! To change your settings, go to the new messaging centre then click "Digest Settings" on the sidebar. We can also do it for you.

Managing data

We've made it much easier to manage your organisation's data using ecoPortal. Data from any data set can now be batch manipulated directly in our new spreadsheet widgets and copied and pasted to and from spreadsheet programs such as Excel.

For more complex data where multiple readings for a single point in time need to be entered or extracted, we've introduced functionality called "Data Views". Data views are defined per-organisation and provide a composite view of your organisation's data, allowing you to view and change the values of multiple datasets at once via a friendly spreadsheet widget. To start using data views, simply click "Data Views" on the sidebar while viewing your organisation's data or click here to go straight there.

Better Trackable Data Filtering

We've added in a new filtering mode for trackable data which allows for arbitrarily complex filtering to be performed, including searching inside specific fields within your trackable data. Want to have a look at incidents from the last 3 months which involve a specific type of spill or a particular area of your business? Simply click "Advanced Search" on the sidebar when on the trackable dashboard and start building your searches today.

Because these searches can be quite complex, searches are saved against your user account. While this may seem cumbersome the first time you search this way, you will soon be able to build up a set of standard search views which give you great flexibility and insight into your organisation's trackable data. We can help you build these searches too.

Improvements to Reports

Reports can now be rendered, saved, printed and viewed as a whole. These reports are immutable once rendered - they reflect the state of ecoPortal at the time of creation and do not update afterwards. ecoPortal keeps a complete history of every report render that has been performed in your organisation indexed by time and an optional label, making this functionality perfect for audits.

Other changes to reports include better quality printouts, better image scaling behavior across different browsers and tagging pages for reports now being OR-based rather than AND-based.

If you would like to have your reports and printouts use your organisation's particular branding, please get in touch with your ecoPortal Advisor or contact us directly.

General Usability Improvements

That's the big changes covered, but in addition to those there have been solid months put into improving the stability and usability of the ecoPortal platform. Points of particular note:

Datepickers on Targets

Archived pages no longer show up on attachment components

Mailto support in wysiwyg

Option to view all comments on a comment component

iPad colorpicker support

Reorderable Image Galleries

Improvements to ecoWheel Rendering

Smarter advisors page

We hope you enjoy these changes. As always, if you have any comments, issues or general feedback feel free to contact your ecoPortal advisor for more information, or contact us directly at [email protected].

[ecoportal]

Will the proposed changes to ISO 14001 enhance the effectiveness of environmental management systems?

In theory, the development of an Environmental Management System (EMS) is a fantastic way to reduce a company’s impact on the environment. If an EMS is designed and maintained effectively it can provide a perfect platform to implement an organisation’s sustainability strategy. Unfortunately the bureaucratic and box ticking approaches that are traditionally used to do this are outdated and put simply – do not work.

An effective EMS engages staff, facilitates systematic improvements in environmental performance and allows an organisation to credibly communicate that it has an approach in place to mitigate its impacts.  The ISO 14001 standard was developed to support organisations in implementing effective systems. However, most environmental management professionals would agree that (for various reasons) it hasn’t managed to optimally facilitate this.

Picture this situation: An organisation has been asked by its customers or a parent company to implement an EMS in order to achieve certification to ISO 14001. The Environmental Manager develops a ‘system’ which consists of a range of documented procedures to meet the requirements of the standard.  In addition to this, he or she maintains a number of spreadsheets on his or her computer to record environmental metrics and document legal requirements.  An auditor from an accredited body visits the organisation and confirms that the company meets all the requirements of the standard and the company achieves third party certification. The company celebrates it’s achievement of having reached the ‘pinnacle of environmental management’. A year goes by and the auditor is back – again the company achieves certification (perhaps with a few corrective actions). While the company celebrates that the sales team can inform its customers that the organisation has achieved certification – the Environmental Manager knows that in reality few of the staff members read the ‘folder on the shelf’ system and that environmental management and sustainability principles are far from integrated into the business.

Does this scenario sound familiar? You may have a system like this in your own company. If you are a management systems consultant or auditor you will almost certainly have developed or audited ‘systems’ like this for your clients. The implementation of management systems using this approach is very common in New Zealand and around the world. It is not unusual that ‘folder on the shelf’ systems lead to a lack of awareness and commitment by management and employees.

This situation has led to the perception that there is limited value in implementing a traditional EMS as described above. Not surprisingly there has been a lack of uptake of EMS and ISO 14001 certification in New Zealand. At the time of writing only 286 certificates had been issued in this country (according to the JAS-ANZ website).

The ISO 14001 standard is currently being reviewed by a technical committee of the International Standards Organization. This will come as a relief to some and a burden to others. The changes involve amendments to the structure and requirements of the standard.

The structure of ISO 14001 will be amended to incorporate a ‘high-level structure for management systems’ to facilitate the alignment and compatibility of the EMS standard with other management system standards such as occupational health and safety (OHSAS 18001) and quality (ISO 9001). This is an important step as organisations are rightly looking to integrate their management systems to increase their efficiency and move towards sustainability management.

The changes proposed to the requirements in the draft version of the ISO 14001 standard are more fundamental. The most significant changes to the requirements in comparison to the 2004 version of the standard are as follows:

There is an increased focus on the actual environmental performance of the organisation. In the past, companies have come under scrutiny (for reasons made obvious in this column) for having a ‘system’ without actually reducing their environmental impact. The current draft requires the continual improvement of the environmental performance of the organisation whereas in the 2004 version the focus is on the continual improvement of the system. The increased focused on environmental performance is absolutely key as this is of course the primary reason why organisations should be implementing an EMS.

The needs and requirements of interested parties will require greater consideration in the development and maintenance of an EMS. The increased emphasis on considering the views of internal and external stakeholders will align ISO 14001 with reporting guidelines such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework. This is fantastic because all too often there seems to be a disconnect between the operational performance of organisations (in terms of their EMS) and their external environmental communications.

Upstream and downstream activities in the value chain that are considered to include significant environmental aspects will need to be taken into account in the design and operation of the EMS. This is perhaps the most significant change proposed in the standard as it will require organisations wishing to gain certification to consider the entire life cycle rather than just their own operations in the scope of their system. By including upstream and downstream activities in the design of an EMS, organisations will ensure that they are not inadvertently shifting environmental burdens to other stages of a product or service life cycle.

I am hopeful that the proposed changes will go some way in mitigating the compliance and box-ticking approaches which are currently prevalent.

The proposed changes to ISO 14001 have not been confirmed and are two years away from being enacted. A window exists for organisations to be proactive and improve their system to make the transition to the revised standard smoother. There are real and tangible business benefits of moving beyond the compliance focus and adopting a performance based approach to environmental management and sustainability.

Manuel Seidel - ecoPortal

[ecoportal]

March ecoPortal Update

Here is the big stuff that’s been happening over the last few months:

A new domain - ecoPortal.com

We’re happy to announce that ecoPortal has a new domain which is easier to type and remember. All your old bookmarks and widgets will continue to work for the foreseeable future, but if you update them you’ll find that they will run a bit faster.

New infrastructure

We’ve been seeing a lot of growth at ecoPortal, particularly on the international side. This meant we were scheduled to outgrow our NZ hosting within the next couple of months. To prepare for this, we’ve been optimizing the site for the cloud, and as part of the ecoPortal.com move we have completely changed infrastructure. For our current customers, this will mean a better average global response time, the ability to store files of virtually unlimited size (up from the previous limit of 10MB), better data security and better redundancy.

Batch file upload

The new infrastructure enabled us to implement a much desired feature - multiple file upload and drag and drop. These features are available for our customers running a modern browser such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or IE9+. For those of our customers stuck on IE8, you should find your experience improved also, just without the “multiple” option.

The new file upload features and interface are available for file attachments, image galleries and the optional trackables module.

Continual improvement

Most of the improvements since the last update have consisted of liaising with customers, tracking and fixing issues sitewide to make the ecoPortal experience better for everyone. If you have an issue or feedback, please feel free to contact us at [email protected]. Otherwise, enjoy!

[ecoportal]

ecoPortal was profiled in the latest copy of the Unlimited business magazine. The feature story highlights how Spark, a business planning competition at the University of Auckland, has ignited over 90 ventures that have raised $130M. ecoPortal is one of those ventures. In 2008, we entered the Spark competition with the idea of developing a consultancy. Since then, we have worked hard to develop ecoPortal as a sustainability management platform, that supports consultants and their clients on their journey to sustainability. An excerpt from the article is below, and you can read more about the Spark story by purchasing the magazine here.

     ecoPortal’s Logan Wait answers the phone still buzzing from receiving confirmation of a big, new order. The University of Auckland has just  signed up as a customer, joining the likes of Fonterra and the Auckland Council on ecoPortal’s dance card. There’s a particular appropriateness about this latest customer: ecoPortal was founded by Wait and four fellow University of Auckland mechanical engineering graduates after they participated in the 2008 Spark programme. From the rudimentary initial concept, the engineers created an exciting cleantech company, offering a simple, web-based environmental management system that organisations can use to achieve their sustainability goals.      “What I pitch is that sustainability is a big, complex issue and has a lot of different facets, much like the sales process was before tools Salesforce.com arrived,” says Wait, explaining the business proposition.      “We’ve created a super simple system to help organisations identify, mitigate and manage their sustainability issues. They can save costs on waste, water, energy and carbon, gain and maintain compliance and then communicate their sustainability actions to their stakeholders in a transparent way.”      Having successfully commercialised the software in New Zealand and made its first export sales, ecoPortal is now looking to build sales channels in the UK, Canada and Australia.      It’s rather a different looking company than Wait and his colleagues took to the finals of spark. Then, the vision was of a consultancy focused on stimulating innovation in manufacturing companies, with sustainability management just one aspect. They didn’t win, but they did well enough to get funding to attend the Stanford Business School’s Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship, where they got an up close look at successful Silicon Valley startups. Returning to New Zealand, they “put a ring around” ecoPortal as the most obviously scalable opportunity in the portfolio.      Nevertheless, Spark was key. “It gave us the opportunity of putting our [engineering] knowledge and expertise into a commercial business plan and entity. Ans the mentorship we got, having access to people at the top of their game, was invaluable.”      Wait reckons engineers make good entrepreneurs, an observation that was reinforced at Stanford, “where they say that the best ideas come from the engineering department, particularly the post-grads”. All five of the original engineering team from 2008 remain involved in ecoPortal, two of them full time and the rest contributing when they can.

Thanks Spark for your help along our journey, and thank you Unlimited for featuring Spark in your magazine, more people need to know about the great work they do.

[ecoportal]

Environmental Managers Forum 2013

ecoPortal's Dr Manuel Seidel will be presenting his approach for engaging and maintaining buy-in from senior managers and staff in environmental improvement at the upcoming Environmental Managers Forum.

The environmental managers’ job is multifaceted and under constant development. It is of great importance to stay up to date as national regulations as well as international standards keep evolving. With this event you will get the overview you need to stay one step ahead instead of having to run as fast as you can just to keep up.

[ecoportal]

For those people who are interested in ISO 14001, there is an opportunity to provide your feedback which will contribute towards the improvement of the standard.

The objective of this survey is to develop an understanding of the needs of users and other interested parties in relation to environmental management systems standards, in order to inform the revisions of ISO 14001 and ISO 14004. The survey takes into account key topics from the ongoing discussions in the working groups that are revising these standards, with the goal of continual improvement. The survey data set will be made available to interested parties upon request.

[ecoportal]

Auckland Council aims to reduce its greenhouse gases by 40 per cent by 2040 against 1990 levels; waste to landfill by 30 per cent by 2018; and water usage by 15 per cent by 2025. 

"The sustainability team is using ecoPortal, an integrated web-based interactive environmental management system for centralising its reporting on resource efficiency, carbon, waste minimisation and energy management programmes. "

[ecoportal]

Control tower, central ideas bank – or just one platform ‘to rule them all ,’ web-based ecoPortal is designed to simplify environmental management by putting all the relevant data in one readily accessible and quickly comprehensible site. Although originally designed for SMEs, the system has been adopted by large distributed organisations (users include Unitec and Auckland City), says ecoPortal co-founder Logan Wait. “It effectively creates a collaboration platform where everybody knows what they are doing and have all the tools in one location.” The system is flexible enough to be adapted to any business or industry, allowing them to put strategy into action and centralise the sort of data needed to pursue accreditation. It was specifically built to align with ISO 140001, says Wait. Health, safety, quality and business risk data can all be included and a visual and interactive interface makes accessing the information both simple and intuitive. Sustainabilty managers love it, says Wait, because it makes their lives a lot easier. “It offers a way of capturing all the relevant information and presenting it in a strategic way to show how it aligns with the overall direction of the organisation. "That makes it easier to get engagement from staff, improves communications with senior management and provides a transparency they didn’t have before.”

[ecoportal]

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