Officeworks protects its people and the planet
New report outlines a prolific and positive program.
Officeworks has reiterated its objective to move to 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025 following the commencement of the first phase of its onsite solar energy roll-out.
The solar energy objective is one of a lengthy series of community and sustainability programs outlined in the company’s People & Planet Positive report, a follow-up to an inaugural report released in 2015.
Highlights of the report include:
- Achieving a 72 per cent reduction in direct carbon emissions on the prior year.
- Working with planting partner Greening Australia, to plant 794,000 trees since the program was launched in 2017 (towards a goal of planting two million trees by 2025), and restoring 1,500 hectares of land.
- Achieving a 91 per cent recycling rate for all Officeworks operational waste, with waste sent to landfill reduced by 32 per cent on the prior year.
- Removing the annual equivalent of 6.7 million pieces of plastic from product packaging.
- Building meaningful employment opportunities for the Indigenous community, with Indigenous team members now representing 3.8 per cent of the team.
Together with customers and partners, Officeworks supported 7525 students through partnerships to improve educational outcomes, provided $6.44m in community contributions to local and national causes, and collected 1474 tonnes of unwanted products from our customers to be recycled, repaired or repurposed.
Officeworks also plans to install solar panels on at least 20 stores this year and is looking at batteries to power autonomous robots at a Melbourne fulfilment centre.
Officeworks managing director Sarah Hunter said: “The past year has presented challenges that impacted all parts of our business but the safety and well-being of our team and customers has remained our absolute priority.
“We have significantly increased our focus and investment in this area during the global pandemic, resulting in our safest year ever.
Our success against our People & Planet Positive 2025 commitments is shared and our achievements are only possible thanks to our team, customers and partners. As we look ahead, we know some of our goals are ambitious, but we’re committed to making a lasting, positive difference by putting people and the planet at the heart of what we do,” she said.
Date Published:
7 September 2021