The Ministry for the Environment (MfE) is premier sponsor of New Zealand's first Startup Weekend Environment. We asked people from MfE what kind of issues they would like startups to solve, and this is what they said.

1. We asked people from around
Ministry for the Environment…
…If you could solve one issue in your area of
work, what would it be?

2. Chris from Climate
Change…
• Invent the Xero of carbon accountancy and streamline
voluntary/compulsory emissions reporting from a business’
perspective: streamlining the multiple lines of compliance (eg ETS,
Customs data on imports of synthetic gases, EECA reporting,
voluntary reporting…) and help to embed it as a part of business
improvement and the environmental bottom line.
• Figure out how to handle cross-boundary activities in regional
greenhouse gas inventories to better understand tackling ghg
emissions from a local perspective. This is like a top-down version
of the first idea.
• I hear that lots of businesses want to do something about their
emissions and there’s probably a gap for professional, targeted
advice on how to do this (e.g. for large corporates) that goes
beyond simply replacing their light bulbs to make real gains.

3. Dorothee from
Strategy
Tackle our materialistic way of thinking and behaving. E.g…
• decreasing or eradicating littering
• encouraging the public ownership/renting and use of electric
vehicles (to the point people don’t need to own a car anymore)
• encouraging the build of communal living in cities where you could
still have individual, independent living areas but shared production
• use and re-use/recycle of resources
• grow most our basic food ourselves so business can focus on the
high-value market
Develop a tool to make participation to government decision-making
fun and practical so we get more and better-informed public
participation to how we manage natural resources.
Encourage even more citizen science, so people understand the world
they live in, including how one thing affects another – the mountain-to-
sea perspective, and know how to make things better.

4. Roz and Lucy from
waste and
remediation
We fund community groups and councils to
remediate contaminated areas. How can we
know whether or not our funding to
community groups is effective or is
improving the environment?
Also - More, useful data on waste!

5. Cheri and Connie,
Mana Taiao
Iwi capacity. I think we could achieve some great environmental gains
if Iwi had more resources to put towards environmental mahi (work).
Increase the numbers of Māori entering and completing
undergraduate, and post-graduate qualifications in science and
engineering
Why?
Breaking down barriers, enhancing potential, celebrating diversity,
better acknowledging realities, respecting connections, transforming
environmental-human resilience outcomes… …and just, because.

6. Joe, Resource
Management
Solve excessive housing costs.
It drives inequality and is a major risk for the
economy.
What would I do? Enable density in cities.

7. Jackie, Environmental
Science and Systems
Monitoring
Use our datasets! They are
static, but an interested
person could do something
cool with them, particularly
combining them or joining
them with other data.
https://data.mfe.govt.nz/

8. Cath from Resource
Management
Get people connected to the environmental impacts
their actions are causing.
This could be a game where you get points for every
positive action (e.g. walking to school or work)?