New Zealand’s Sustainable Business Awards are the longest-running and most pre-eminent sustainability awards in the country. Now in their 19th year, the awards recognise businesses, local government, social enterprises and individuals for success in sustainability. 

We’re excited to share that amidst 75 high-calibre finalists, Cogo walked away with the 2021 Climate Action Innovator Award at tonight’s Sustainable Business Awards NZ.

Founder and CEO of the Sustainable Business Network which runs the awards, Rachel Brown ONZM, commented recently: “The latest IPCC report on climate change has left no doubt about the imperative to change our ways of living and working. Businesses need to step up – their customers, employees and the planet are demanding it.” 

Cogo was built on the belief that some of the most challenging issues facing society, such as the climate change, sustainability and workers’ rights, can be tackled at scale when consumers are empowered to vote with their wallets, and influence businesses to be a force for good. We help everyday people (consumers and businesses) to ‘step up’ in every sense of the word to help create a fairer and more sustainable world through our world-leading sustainability tech solutions.  

Creating mass change

“Cogo does this by empowering millions of consumers and businesses globally with the ability to understand, reduce and offset their emissions. To create mass change, we partner with large organisations, including six of the top 50 banks in the world, and will continue to expand globally as consumer demand for transparency around their spend increases,” explains Cogo’s Founder Ben Gleisner.

Cogo’s large partnerships include NatWest (UK), CommBank (Australia) and Santander (Spain). NatWest, a sponsor of the recently held UN COP26 summit, named Cogo and Microsoft as its technology partners supporting the bank’s 8 million banking app customers to take meaningful action on the climate crisis.

We're all about helping the world ‘step up’ to the climate change crisis by empowering consumers and businesses to vote with their wallets, and influence businesses to be a force for good! We're here to collaborate across the government and business sectors to collectively make significant impact - the planet won't wait for us to ACT.

How Cogo works

By working with banks, other financial institutions and software companies, we’re able to enrich customer transactions (both for consumers and businesses) with carbon emissions data - helping people better understand the impact of their daily decisions and lifestyle choices as well as reduce and compensate for their impact on people and the planet. These insights are used to display a customer’s carbon footprint and, because successful climate action is a combination of understanding and taking regular, active steps to improve your carbon footprint, we use behavioural science frameworks to ‘nudge’ customers to take action to reduce their footprint. These actions could include choosing lower emission businesses or products; lifestyle changes such as composting; or signing up for a bank’s sustainability loan.

“We’re excited to be recognised for the work we’re doing by the Sustainable Business Network. This recognition is a huge tribute to the collective effort of millions of people who trust Cogo to help them make meaningful changes to their everyday lives for a better tomorrow” concludes Ben.