Officeworks - People and Planet Positive

In the past year, Officeworks has continued to integrate sustainability into business-as-usual (BAU) practices. To support its People & Planet Positive 2025 commitments, Officeworks launched new training modules on topics such as cultural awareness, making meaningful contributions in the community, becoming a zero-waste business and taking meaningful climate action. Officeworks also made substantial progress in the areas of waste management and energy consumption, where the collective efforts of store operations, merchandise and property teams contributed to a 32 per cent reduction in waste sent to landfill, with 91 per cent of all waste recycled and a 7.2 per cent reduction in emissions.  

This year, Officeworks expanded its approach to ethical sourcing to include all goods not for resale suppliers and service providers. The successful rollout of this expanded approach was facilitated by the upskilling of contract managers from teams including finance, store operations, procurement and marketing, on issues such as modern slavery.  

Sustainability is important to the Officeworks team and by engaging with them to make a positive difference, Officeworks is embedding responsible practices across the business and holding itself accountable. Team members, customers and stakeholders expect Officeworks to run a sustainable business. Ensuring sustainable practices are embraced across the business is key to ensuring the 2025 commitments are achieved.

In March 2021, Officeworks commissioned customer research into attitudes towards sustainability, which showed customers want to make sustainable choices, it just needs to be easy to access and affordable, without compromising quality. The research also demonstrated Officeworks’ current key sustainability and community initiatives are well aligned with customer expectations and provide a meaningful and unique way to help customers live more sustainably. These include Officeworks’ instore recycling services, its tree planting and land restoration initiative Restoring Australia, helping customers shop more sustainability through Greener Choices product range and supporting students by helping to provide them with an education.  

While these initiatives are well understood internally at Officeworks, there is an opportunity to promote them more widely to generate positive behavioural change and demonstrate the leadership Officeworks stakeholders want. In doing so, these programs will enjoy greater engagement with customers and increase Officeworks’ prospects of reaching the People & Planet Positive 2025 commitments.  

Key achievements during the 2021 financial year included: 

In the coming year, Officeworks will share its ambitions more widely by further investing in consumer awareness campaigns and instore signage of key sustainability initiatives, including Restoring Australia, customer recycling programs and supporting students. In addition, it will continue to source, design and launch more sustainable products as part of its Greener Choices range to help customers shop more sustainably.

The latest Officeworks Positive Difference Plan is here.