Hato Hone St John

Hato Hone St John (HHSJ) is a charitable organisation, providing emergency ambulance services, community health and youth leadership programmes, first aid training and second-hand retail stores across the country. Services that play a central role in the health and wellbeing of New Zealand communities. HHSJ ambulances serve 90% of New Zealanders across 97% of the country. In FY23, they answered 673,771 emergency calls and treated or transported 515,230 patients.

HHSJ has been Toitū carbonreduce certified since FY 21/22 and sought Go Well’s services to measure and analyse their FY23 data, as well as support them through the annual audit process with Toitū. Data for this inventory is spread across hundreds of locations and a headcount of 16,000 total personnel (FY22 annual report), resulting in a high degree of complexity. We collected all available data from HHSJ’s various systems and suppliers, and created auditable solutions to fill areas where no data could be attained. Examples of this include establishing a commuting-specific emission factor based on an internal survey, and a proxy for missing electricity and waste data using property information.

Following on from the successful audit of their FY23 data we worked with HHSJ to produce their first Emissions Reduction Plan (ERP) draft. This involved supporting several workshops with internal stakeholders to inform and engage them on the purpose of the ERP and gather information on their opportunities, challenges, and capabilities to reduce their emissions.

For a charitable organisation that responds to medical emergencies, very careful consideration is required when considering potential trade-offs (and potential co-benefits) across cost, resource, serviced delivery and emissions reductions.  

We are now supporting HHSJ in integrating their emissions data with a software dashboarding tool. Work that is still ongoing at the time of writing. 

Considering the role HHSJ plays in our community, the importance of their work, and the significant challenges they face as a charitable organisation we have been hugely impressed by the actions they have taken so far concerning our climate crisis and hope it influences many more to do the same.