Green Gorilla has spent more than a decade challenging the idea that waste should simply be hauled away and buried. Since 2010, the 100% New Zealand-owned business has grown into a major waste and resource recovery operator, helping customers recover more materials, reduce landfill and take a more practical approach to circular economy outcomes.

Working across construction and demolition, commercial and industrial waste, residential collections, multi-unit dwellings, compostable waste and green waste, Green Gorilla operates resource recovery facilities and transfer stations across Auckland, Waikato and Tauranga.

Its aim is to maximise recovery, reuse and recycling so landfill becomes the last resort, not the first port of call.

That approach has helped Green Gorilla build a strong position in New Zealand’s resource recovery sector.

The company supports customers with waste audits and Toitū-verified diversion reporting, helping organisations understand where their waste is going and how they can improve.

It also plays an important role in diverting construction and demolition waste from landfill, one of the major opportunities for improving resource efficiency in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Building a framework for progress

As Green Gorilla’s impact grew, the business saw an opportunity to bring its sustainability work together in a clearer way.

The company already had strong activity underway across waste diversion, resource recovery, low-emissions operations, workforce development, health and safety, community support and customer reporting.

What it needed was a framework that connected this work, reflected its purpose and helped customers, staff and partners understand where the company was heading.

Green Gorilla partnered with sustainability firm thinkstep-anz to develop a sustainability strategy framework that could guide decisions, support reporting and communicate progress without overclaiming.

The work combined sustainability strategy, copy writing and design, with Green Gorilla’s practical action at the centre.

The process began with a review of Green Gorilla’s existing sustainability activities, goals and information.

The leadership team then worked with thinkstep-anz to identify the sustainability topics that matter most to the business and its stakeholders.

This helped bring internal thinking together and created a stronger foundation for future reporting, investment and communication.

The result is Green Gorilla’s sustainability strategy framework, Here for Good: cultivating a legacy that will live beyond us.

The framework brings together Green Gorilla’s story, operations, network, recovered materials, sustainability pillars and 2025–2030 targets.

It shows how the company’s everyday work connects with its longer-term goals and gives the team a clearer way to measure progress over time.

Making sustainability easier to explain

The framework recognises that sustainability is about more than environmental performance.

It also captures Green Gorilla’s social contribution, from paying above the Living Wage and investing in training to supporting a diverse workforce and maintaining strong health and safety systems.

It helps Green Gorilla move beyond greenhush – the tendency to under-communicate sustainability achievement out of a desire to avoid overstating the case.

By bringing its actions, targets and outcomes together in a structured, evidence-based framework, Green Gorilla can now show the value of its sustainability efforts and communicate them with confidence.

For customers, the document makes Green Gorilla’s approach easier to understand. It shows how the company is investing in resource recovery infrastructure, renewable electricity, low-emissions sites and practical solutions that help organisations improve waste outcomes.

For staff, partners and communities, it creates a shared view of Green Gorilla’s role in supporting a more circular economy.

“Green Gorilla has always believed landfill should be the last resort. We are busy doing work every day, recovering resources and reducing waste to landfill.

Working with thinkstep-anz helped us step back, bring our story together clearly, and turn years of practical action into a living strategy our team, customers and partners can understand and build on,” says Green Gorilla’s CEO Elaine Morgan.

Green Gorilla’s achievement shows the value of turning sustainability activity into a clear business asset.

For many businesses, especially privately owned companies with strong sustainability credentials, the challenge is not the work itself but finding the time and resources to explain it in a way that is relevant for their stakeholders.

The framework gives Green Gorilla a practical way to guide investment, support customer conversations, strengthen reporting and build trust.

As more organisations look to reduce landfill, improve material recovery and move towards circular economy goals, Green Gorilla is showing what practical, local action can look like.

Read Green Gorilla’s Sustainability Framework

www.thinkstep-anz.com