The Environment

Environmentally preferable products and packaging

Most of our waste comes from materials used in the packaging and shipping of our products.

In order to achieve significant reductions in our waste levels, we're working to:

1. Select better products for the environment.
2. Decrease the use of unnecessary packing.
3. Use recyclable and reusable materials in items where packaging is required.
4. Remove all single-use plastic bags from our operations and replace them with reusable alternatives.

We give back where we can. 5 cents from the sale of every reusable bag is donated to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy to assist them to acquire land and establish sanctuaries for the conservation of Australia's threatened wildlife and ecosystems.

Thanks to the success of this initiative we have been able to donate in excess of $60,000 since December 2008. That equates to over 1,200,000 reusable bags!

Recycling

Quite simply, we want zero waste – to see a day where there is nothing that Officeworks has thrown away in any landfill site in Australia. It's going to take some time and a lot of effort to get there but we believe it's worth it.

Recycling is good for our environment but it's also good because it saves money for our customers, our suppliers, and our business. We have recently added a dedicated Recycling Unit to the airlock of all of our stores.

Through our business partnership with Visy, all Officeworks stores and Support Offices are equipped to recycle:

We are long term supporters of Cartridges 4 Planet Ark, and have recently introduced the Mobile Muster program which allows our team members and customers to recycle old mobile phones and accessories.

At Officeworks, we're trying to do what we can to improve electronics recycling in Australia by participating in trials such as:

• "Byteback" and
• "BatteryBack".

The purpose of participating in these trials, in conjunction with Industry and Government, is to develop programs for electronics recycling that really work for everyone.

Sustainable operations

Our overarching objective is to be a better business by improving all aspects of our operations; from the products we sell, to the stores we build, to the energy we use, and everything in between.

Our stores are becoming more environmentally friendly with the introduction of a number of energy saving initiatives such as:

1. The removal of skylights.
2. The introduction of reduced wattage fluorescent lighting.
3. The use of high-bay lamps.
4. The implementation of our rainwater harvesting system on the roofs of new stores.

These energy-saving, and therefore emissions saving, initiatives are just a few of the things we're doing to lessen the impact of our business on the environment.

We also have a long list of additional opportunities we will continue to explore.

Environmental education

Our goal is to fully integrate environmental responsibility into every facet of our operations.

The first step in environmental education is to ensure that our own knowledge is up to scratch! So we've done a lot of research in 2009 and consequently made a lot of progress in identifying key initiatives for the years ahead.

2010 will see Officeworks continue to improve on our waste reduction activities. We look forward to working with industry and government experts to get future initiatives off the ground.