Summerset Retirement Villages

Summerset Social Responsibility

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Summerset is committed to being socially responsible and demonstrates this by doing lots of great things in our workplaces, communities, and through reducing our impact on the environment.

We are the first retirement village operator in New Zealand to be Toitū netcarbonzero certified and a member of the Climate Leaders Coalition. We have offset all our unavoidable emissions and have an ongoing plan to reduce our carbon emissions. We are also a member of the New Zealand Green Building Council.


We’re dedicated to minimising our environmental impact, here are some examples of what we've been doing:

  • We have recycling options available at all of our villages and offices to minimise waste going to landfill

  • A ‘green waste programme’, which means all of our foliage goes into composting — and we're implementing organic waste collection where possible

  • All of our new villages will have LED lighting throughout and we are upgrading to LED lighting in existing villages

  • The majority of our new villages have automatic pool covers to keep the heat in and our electricity use down

  • Educating our staff and residents on how they can contribute to saving energy, including running “Switch Off” campaigns to switch off lights, equipment and appliances when not in use

  • We utilise Zoom technology as an alternative to in-person meetings and reduce carbon emissions from travel

  • Looking after our extensive gardens by choosing environment-friendly fertilisers

  • A network of swipe-card operated printers means we’ve substantially brought down the amount of paper we use.

But we’re not going to stop there.


Education. Community. Wellbeing

These things are all very important to us and we implement these elements into what we call our ‘people and community programmes’ — because we believe that being socially responsible also means having a positive influence on our staff and the communities we are part of.  

We are active supporters of a range of community based organisations, including the sponsorship of Kiwi eggs at the National Hatchery Aotearoa who are neighbours to our proposed Fairy Springs village in Rotorua.

We offer training and development for staff, and our yearly ‘Applause Awards’ recognise the efforts of our people. When it comes to wellbeing, we provide flu vaccines, free health insurance, and all our staff have access to EAP — a free counselling service. Summerset also run engagement surveys regularly — so our people can tell us how we could be doing better.

Find out more about our environment and social sustainability practices