Welling­ton’s “ol’ faith­ful” taxi-cab com­pa­ny Com­bined (or Welling­ton Com­bined Taxis to give them their full title) have gone through a bit of a trans­for­ma­tion in the last 12 months or so.

With the arrival on the scene of new “green” play­er Green Cabs (about whom we have writ­ten — and been wit­ness to some con­tro­ver­sy — in the past), I guess they were faced with the choice of adapt­ing, or get added to the bot­tom of the endan­gered species list.

Hap­pi­ly (for them, us, con­sumer choice AND the plan­et that we share) they chose the for­mer.

Read on after the jump to find out what they have been up to..

Ear­ly last year, Welling­ton Com­bined Taxis made a strong com­mit­ment to address the envi­ron­men­tal impact of their busi­ness.  First­ly, they ruled that from mid-2008 no more petrol-only vehi­cles will be per­mit­ted join their taxi fleet (around 450 cars). In addi­tion, they have under­tak­en to ensure that by the begin­ning of 2014, their entire fleet will con­sist of vehi­cles which are more fuel-effi­cient than reg­u­lar petrol-fueled mod­els. 

Just 18 months in, they already have over a third of their fleet con­form­ing to their new stan­dard, with near­ly 50 hybrids, and five i30 diesels with sim­i­lar fuel-effi­cien­cy pro­files to the hybrids. They also run a decent num­ber of big­ger vehi­cles like the Sonata diesel cabs, which are still very effi­cient com­pared to petrol vehi­cles but pro­vide a decent amount of leg-room in the back — some­thing that will come as music to the ear of many pas­sen­gers.

Com­bined have been encour­aged by the feed­back from the pub­lic which has deserved­ly been very pos­i­tive, but the process has­n’t been with­out one or two set­backs. In March 2008 they were the sub­ject of a “green­wash­ing” inves­ti­ga­tion by the Com­merce Com­mis­sion over claims that they were pub­lish­ing false and mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion on their web­site — specif­i­cal­ly about LPG taxis reduc­ing car­bon diox­ide pol­lu­tion, and the fuel effi­cien­cy of Nis­san Max­i­ma engines. Penal­ties for breach­ing the Fair Trad­ing Act include fines of up to $200,000 for a com­pa­ny.

Sev­er­al months lat­er Com­bined were issued with a warn­ing by the Com­mis­sion and advised to change their com­pli­ance pro­ce­dures to ensure future rep­re­sen­ta­tions are accu­rate. Com­bined them­selves reck­on they fell vic­tim to the (unfor­tu­nate­ly not uncom­mon) trap of rely­ing on the accu­ra­cy of infor­ma­tion sup­plied by ven­dors, but regard the whole thing as a use­ful learn­ing expe­ri­ence for the com­pa­ny. Tak­ing the Com­mis­sion’s advice they have tight­ened up their busi­ness process­es to pre­vent a recur­rance. 

There’s been anoth­er pos­i­tive out­come, too. It took them two years of hard work, a lot of edu­ca­tion and no small amount of ded­i­ca­tion but with the sup­port of Land­care Research — Com­bined attained car­boNZe­ro CertTM cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the first New Zealand taxi ser­vice to do so. (Are they the only? It’s hard to locate anoth­er.) They meet the require­ments of the car­boNZe­ro CertTM cer­ti­fi­ca­tion hav­ing mea­sured and com­mit­ted to reduc­ing their green­house gas emis­sions, and then mit­i­gat­ing remain­ing unavoid­able emis­sions in respect of their organ­i­sa­tion — includ­ing the vehi­cle fleet, office admin­is­tra­tion, and staff air trav­el. They’re also the only taxi ser­vice in the Welling­ton region (not to men­tion the entire coun­try) list­ed on Green­list, the Sus­tain­able Busi­ness Net­work’s direc­to­ry of sus­tain­able prod­ucts and ser­vices. (Huh? No Green Cabs?)

Old dogs are prover­bial­ly known for their inabil­i­ty to learn new tricks, but “ol’ faith­ful” Welling­ton Com­bined Taxis appear to have done just that. Their fleet is con­stant­ly chang­ing and upgrad­ing to new­er, more fuel-effi­cient vehi­cles, and they close­ly fol­low devel­op­ments in vehi­cle and fuel-effi­cien­cy tech­nol­o­gy look­ing for more effi­cient mod­els they can allow into their fleet. They’ve decid­ed to do some­thing for the envi­ron­ment, and they’re in it for the long haul. (Is it also the com­mer­cial­ly-savvy deci­sion? Pos­si­bly. Either way, I reck­on it’s the right one.) Good on them! Shake hands? Good dog.