Certified impact & transparency report 2025

Founded in 2011 in Palmerston North, Just Zilch is New Zealand’s longest-running free store. The principle is simple: anyone who comes through the door is welcome to take what they need, no questions asked.

Each day, the team rescues around 2,000 kg of surplus food from supermarkets, producers and local businesses. Some goes directly to the people who walk into the store, the rest to more than 80 community groups across Palmerston North and the wider Manawatū–Whanganui region. All told, the operation supports around 450 individuals daily.

$33,285 from the Community Decarbonisation Fund is helping Just Zilch install a 23.6 kW solar energy system at its Featherston Street site. Running the chillers, fridges and electric delivery van takes more than 59,000 kWh a year, and the solar system covers that load. That adds up to more than $6,300 in savings in its first year and over $200,000 across 25 years, all of which flows back into keeping the food rescue work running.

The Graveyard Shift is a volunteer-led community group dedicated to reclaiming graves that would otherwise be lost to overgrowth. Each month, volunteers of all ages, cultures, and backgrounds gather at Taitā Cemetery and St John’s Upper Hutt to clear weeds, uncover headstones, and recover what time has almost taken: names, dates, memories.

For volunteers, it’s meaningful because as long as a name can be read, the person it belongs to isn’t entirely gone. The group grew from the Upper Hutt community, drawing in more people over time, and runs on the classic Kiwi grassroots spirit: home baking on working days, drinks in cans that get recycled.

$1,468 from the Community Decarbonisation Fund is helping The Graveyard Shift replace its petrol-powered weed eaters and leaf blowers with battery alternatives. In a cemetery, noise matters. Petrol tools get the job done but they’re loud, and people visiting family members deserve peace and quiet. For a group already running as sustainably as possible, the change also means no fossil fuels on site and a smaller footprint with every working day.

Since 1957, Hōhepa Hawke’s Bay has supported people with intellectual disabilities through homes, a school, day services and meaningful work. Today more than 160 people are part of the Hōhepa community.

Its social enterprises include a market garden, a biodynamic farm, award-winning cheesemaking, a native plant nursery and craft workshops, each one a place to build skills, get creative, and connect with others. Fresh fruit and vegetables, cheese, yoghurt and milk from Hōhepa’s farms are delivered to the community’s homes and school, with the surplus available at the Hōhepa Hawke’s Bay stores in Clive and Taradale.

$28,142 from the Community Decarbonisation Fund has replaced the diesel bore pump at Hōhepa’s Clive dairy farm with a high-efficiency electric pressure pump, housed in a new weatherproof shed. It draws irrigation water for the pastures that feed Hōhepa’s biodynamic dairy herd, and for the organic market gardens. The new system will save 5 tonnes of carbon and 2,000 litres of diesel a year.

Good Neighbour aims to bring the word 'neighbour' back to the Bay of Plenty. Its six departments cover food rescue, neighbourhood projects, community gardens, firewood, a community kitchen and a care team that helps people not just survive, but thrive. Each initiative is guided by a simple principle: give, serve, and make someone's day.

Each year, Good Neighbour rescues an average of $4.8 million worth of food that’s good enough to eat but not to sell. In the community kitchen, volunteers and people on training and skill-building programmes turn it into meals and food parcels for those who need them.

$45,250 from the Community Decarbonisation Fund has helped Good Neighbour install solar and battery storage at its community hub. The new system powers the refrigeration and freezers that keep the food rescue operation running, cutting power costs and saving 39 tonnes of carbon a year.

The Whakatipu Basin has lost around 95% of its indigenous biodiversity, and the Whakatipu Reforestation Trust was set up to help bring it back. Operating a volunteer-run community nursery on council land near Queenstown, the Trust propagates and grows up to 12,000 native plants each year, planting them out onto public conservation land across the basin.

In 2024 alone, volunteers recorded more than 7,500 hours. Since it started 12 years ago, more than 140,000 plants have gone in the ground, and habitats are returning for the birds, insects, and lizards that once defined the region.

$6,730 from the Community Decarbonisation Fund is helping the Trust replace its ageing solar system, which currently runs a single plug on sunny days, with a new on-grid solar installation. The upgrade will properly power the nursery for the first time: lighting, a seed storage fridge, office equipment, tool charging, and hot water on tap—not only for cups of tea, but for warm-water propagation, too. The system future-proofs the site as the operation grows, keeping ongoing costs low for an organisation that runs almost entirely on volunteer hours.

Living Springs is a not-for-profit outdoor education and environmental centre on Banks Peninsula, near Christchurch. Its vision is to be a camp within an eco sanctuary, where people connect with nature and see restoration in action. Each year it welcomes around 12,000 visitors, including schools, community groups, corporate teams, health camps, and volunteers.

Across its 420-hectare site, running from summit to sea, volunteers carry out planting, trail cutting, and pest control work as part of an ongoing effort to build habitats and restore biodiversity.

Just over $80,900 from the Community Decarbonisation Fund is helping Living Springs replace three petrol and diesel vehicles with a four-wheel drive electric ute and EV charger. For a site this size, it’s a genuine workhorse: reducing emissions and running costs, safer to drive, and able to charge tools on-site, including high-use equipment like chainsaws and weed eaters. It also removes the need to store or handle fossil fuels on the property, and for a centre whose mission is environmental education, gives visitors a visible example of decarbonisation in practice.