Tony O'Reilly
There’s a terrific world out there for eco-friendly New Zealand produce. You can market New Zealand. A country that is blessed by distance in this case, not oppressed by it. You fly over China and you see the smog which you cannot see over the skies in New Zealand. So I believe it is the purest nation in the world in terms of production characteristics, and therefore you should make absolute hay out of that from a production point of view.
Sir Anthony O’Reilly, long-time leader of the Heinz empire.
Exactly who first coined the phrase is uncertain. But New Zealanders have long known that their unique selling proposition in the big wide world revolves around the concept of clean and green.
The image is hugely important for New Zealand in terms of trade. People buy New Zealand meat and think, ‘It’s from New Zealand, where the grass is clean and the rain that falls on the grass is clean.’
Sean Weaver, environmental studies lecturer at Victoria University.
Geoff Ross, founder of 42 Below, notes
The product 42 Below succeeded on the streets of London, New York and Shanghai because it was perceived as coming from a very pure place. Bacardi paid $138 million for a New Zealand vodka – not a Singapore vodka, a Chicago vodka or a Sydney vodka. We have purity credentials most countries don’t. These credentials count for a lot in the industries which make up the bulk of our country’s income. They give us a point of difference, a reason for consumers to pay more for our products, and most importantly a way to grow in our competitive world.
But “clean and green New Zealand” is not without its critics. Firstly, there are those who claim it’s just luck that New Zealand is in this situation, rather than the result of any conscious effort of behalf of Kiwis to be the clean and green kings. Then there are some more reasoned objections. Former New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development Chairman Rob Fenwick says
This clean, green thing has been a useful tool to help us understand how the world thinks of us. But it’s a very passive expression. There’s no call to action in just being clean and green.
Also, Ministry for Environment notes
There are environmental problems that are sufficient to raise questions about the sustainability of the value of New Zealand’s exports attributable to its environmental image…There is a risk that New Zealand will lose value that is created by the current environmental image if we are not vigilant in dealing with the problems that could threaten the image.
The concern is that the clean and green thing is partly a deception for which New Zealand could eventually get busted. That risk has not gone undetected by big business as well. The New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development, whose membership is by invitation only, has been quietly working over the last decade to improve New Zealand’s environmental performance. To legitimize the clean and green spin, in the eyes of some.
The debate about the legitimacy of New Zealand’s clean and green image, and if legitimate, how to make the most of it, forms the core argument of this blog. For more detailed analysis read Tony Everitt’s book CLEAN & GREEN? Brand New Zealand.
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Tags: 100% Pure New Zealand, clean & green, clean & green NZ, Clean and Green, clean and green New Zealand, clean and green NZ, Kaitiakitanga, Tony O'Reilly
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