People & Planet Positive

At Officeworks, People and the Planet are at the heart of what we do and we recognise we have an important role to play in the lives of our team members, and in the local communities where we live and work. By integrating sustainability into our strategy, operations, and decision-making processes, we can contribute positively to people and the planet.

Our 2025 commitments outline our long-term approach to making a positive difference to people and the planet, by supporting the aspirations of our team members and communities where we live and work, upholding and respecting human rights throughout our operations and supply chain, taking meaningful climate action, contributing to a more circular economy, and enabling customers to shop more sustainably.

Our current plan, established in 2020, outlines 18 ambitious commitments across six pillars, providing a five-year roadmap for our team, partners, and communities to work towards. With 166 stores across Australia and over 9,000 dedicated team members, we know the decisions we make today can have a positive difference now and into the future.

Click on the interactive banner below to explore our 18 commitments.
C o m m u n i t y O u r T e a m C l i m a t e A c t i o n C i r c u l a r E c o n o m y H u m a n R i g h t s S u s t a i n a b l e P u r c h a s e s P e o p l e P l a n e t

Our commitments to:

Our Team

Community & Sustainability

Create a safe, healthy work environment where our team can thrive

What's the issue?

The safety, health and wellbeing of our team, suppliers, partners, and our customers remains our number one priority. Our goal is to ensure everyone leaves our sites safe, well and free from any kind of harm or injury.

We recognise supporting the safety, health and wellbeing of our team is not just about physical safety, it is also about achieving positive mental health and wellbeing outcomes that enable our team to bring their best selves to work, every day. This focus is represented through our Safety, Health and Wellbeing Strategy, and our risk management approach to ensuring our team, customers, partners suppliers, and communities are safe, well and engaged.

What are we doing?

We have continued to see an improvement in our safety performance, resulting in our safest year yet with our Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate (TRIFR) reducing to 5.4. While one injury is one too many, this result is a testament to our team who continue to look after each other and come to work every day with a Switch On mindset for themselves, their fellow team members, and our customers.

The progressive rollout of our safety behaviour program, Switch On, has positively contributed to these results. Switch On aims to help develop and sustain a safety culture of awareness, accountability and courage, through the provision of essential training and resources. Team members from Officeworks' Leadership Team, store operations and supply chain were provided with resources to help embed a safety mindset in all locations and across all levels of the business.

Additionally, our health and wellbeing program, Your Best Life, in FY2023 and team members were provided with the tools, resources and initiatives to improve their health and wellbeing. This included the launch of Converge Life (an 'always on' health and wellbeing app), Converge International information sessions across all markets, mental health awareness sessions and the continuation of a Mental Health Oversight Committee. Established in FY2021, the Mental Health Oversight Committee has expanded to include representation across stores, supply chain and support offices and aims to focus on the development of strategic mental health and wellbeing processes, including psychosocial risk assessments and crisis protocols.

A focus on hazard reduction has also been key to improving safety standards across the business and embedding a Switch On culture. This included implementing traffic management for external receiving areas in all stores, store health checks to support assurance and compliance, trials of wearable technology as a deterrent and mitigation of threatening situations, and psychosocial risk assessments. We continue to review our top five critical risks, our effectiveness through our audit program; incidents to validate effectiveness of controls, and identify emerging risks as part of our Safety, Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

Other safety, health and wellbeing initiatives included conducting a strategic review of our incident and investigation system alongside a review of our documentation and contractor management induction, to ensure our high safety standards were being upheld across all formal review and induction processes. As part of this, we implemented a review of our IT system capabilities to upgrade the technology of our Hazard App, Customer Fulfillment Centre Stay Safe App, and our incident reporting system, Service Now, to be customised, easily accessible, and user friendly for team members.

As a result of our continuous focus on the safety, health, and wellbeing of our team, we were proud to be awarded Best Health and Wellbeing Program, and Best Mental Health Program at the National Safety Awards of Excellence hosted by The National Safety Council of Australia in November 2022.

Focus for FY2024

We will continue to foster an environment where safety is viewed beyond the risk of physical harm and continue to invest in building a psychologically safe workplace, where our team members feel comfortable to speak up and be champions of safety - both physically and mentally. We will continue to further develop mental health literacy and awareness resources for our team, reduce the stigma around mental health and support our team to thrive. We will continue to rollout Switch On to more roles and locations in our network and embed lead indicators, encompassing safety, health and wellbeing.

Community & Sustainability

Ensure our team reflects the communities in which we operate, with a strong sense of belonging

What's the issue?

By fostering a culture that encourages and embraces diversity in all forms, we can contribute to our team members' sense of wellbeing and belonging, while better reflecting the communities in which we live and work.

We recognise the value that diversity brings and aim to celebrate people from all walks of life to create a culture of belonging that is reflected in the day-to-day behaviours of our team members, at every location and every level of the business.

What are we doing?

As a national retailer, we understand the important role we play in ensuring our team reflects the communities in which we operate. We support our team members to be their authentic selves at work no matter their life experience, sexuality, gender identity, ability, age, ethnicity, religious beliefs and cultural background.

Our diversity and inclusion plan enables and encourages our team members to continuously build their capability to have authentic and supportive discussions about equity, diversity and inclusion, in a workplace that promotes these values. Within our diversity and inclusion plan, we aim to build team awareness and knowledge across three key areas - First Nations people and culture, Identity, and Accessibility.

  • First Nations people and culture - To respect and recognise Australia's First People, Officeworks is committed to building a greater understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, customs and culture, as well as providing career opportunities and guidance for Indigenous team members.

In FY2023, we continued our strong focus on Indigenous employment and exceeded employment parity of three per cent of our workforce, with 3.3 per cent representation. We achieved this employment milestone through our investment in the retention of existing Indigenous team members, continuing our partnership with The Clontarf Foundation, while providing Indigenous team members with opportunities for personal and professional development, including through the Wesfarmers Indigenous Leadership Initiative.

Sharing First Nations peoples’ stories and achievements has been a key initiative in FY2023 as part of our Reconciliation Action Plan commitments. This included collaborating with Indigenous artist, Natalie Jade, to release a bespoke stationery collection, where 50 cents from every product sold, is donated to The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation (ALNF). Donations from this range support ALNF's 'Living First Languages' platform, which focuses on preserving, revitalising and teaching First Nations' languages.

Throughout FY2023, we continued to build cultural awareness education with our team to increase their understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture and customs.

  • Identity - To recognise and support diversity across the business.

We continue to focus on maintaining gender balance in our leadership team, as defined by a 40/40/20 mix, with 43.53 per cent of leadership roles currently held by women, signifying an increase of 0.7 per cent from the year prior. At the end of FY2023, women represented 43.46 per cent of store leadership roles and 44.13 per cent of corporate leadership roles.

We continued to focus on recognising our diverse workforce by participating in events that embrace and celebrate diversity. This provides an opportunity to raise awareness and mark the occasion with our team and demonstrate our commitment to fostering a team that reflects our communities. This included participation in National Reconciliation Week, where we launched our new Indigenous branding by Marcus Lee, a proud descendant of the Karajarri people in Western Australia. The branding, which will appear in stores and on team lanyards, symbolises our vision to ensure Indigenous people feel welcome in our business, whether they are team members, customers, suppliers, partners, or visitors.

In addition, we continued to explore ways to celebrate diversity of thought and promote belonging while providing a work environment that is free from discrimination, bullying or harassment. This included the launch of our guidelines for supporting gender affirmation and transitioning in the workplace, which is intended to support initial discussions to best understand what gender affirmation support looks like for each individual.

  • Accessibility - To ensure team members are empowered to work in a way that suits them, including working families and carers.

We continue to work with national disability and accessibility partners to support greater access to careers for people living with a disability at Officeworks. In FY2023, we employed 166 team members who identify as having a disability, an increase from 134 team members in the previous year.

In FY2023, Officeworks' Support Office team members worked remotely and in a hybrid way, in line with new ways of working. We recognise flexibility plays an important role in allowing our team members to live their best life and our Flexible Ways of Working Policy supports a more inclusive workforce, where careers can be built through all stages of life. In our annual engagement survey, Your Say, 74 per cent of team members indicated that they feel genuinely supported if they choose to make use of flexible work arrangements.

In May, the Officeworks Support Centre moved from East Bentleigh to a newly refurbished and purpose-designed office located in Chadstone, Victoria. The aim of the new office, titled Officeworks Place, is to enable the behavioural changes required to align with the workplace principles of collaboration and connection. The building includes a quiet place for individual focused work with minimal distractions and background noise, accessible and diverse spaces to support different ways of working, dedicated wellbeing spaces including an ablution room, prayer room and parents' room, as well as biophilic design features to create connectivity to the natural environment.

Focus for FY2024

We will continue to focus on our First Nations people and culture, Identity and Accessibility key areas to ensure our team members and partners feel supported to be their authentic selves no matter their life experience, ability, age, ethnicity, religious beliefs and cultural background. Following the launch of the Wesfarmers Elevate Reconciliation Action Plan in July 2022, we continue to work towards achieving the commitments outlined, including an ongoing focus on hiring, retaining and developing Indigenous team members within stores, support offices and customer fulfilment centres. We will continue to work towards achieving gender balance in leadership roles, and championing LGBTQI+ inclusion within the workplace and beyond.

Our team members are capable for today and the future of work

What's the issue?

Our team members are central to the ongoing success of our business. As the world continues to evolve and adapt in response to new innovations and challenges, we need to ensure our team members have the tools, capabilities and resources they need to succeed in their professional lives now and into the future.

What are we doing?

We conduct an annual engagement survey, Your Say, to measure overall team member engagement and to gather feedback on topics, including career development, growth and learning opportunities. Ongoing learning and development along with leadership training continue to be areas of importance to our team members.

As a result, we continue to invest in the rollout of our leadership program, SPARK, which aims to support leaders to build their confidence in core management and leadership capabilities. Approximately 300 leaders from across the business have completed at least one module from the program, which ran virtually between 2021 and 2023. The program is now in its second cohort, with a dedicated delivery to Store and Customer Fulfillment Centre Coordinators with more than 500 team members commencing their journey through the program in May 2023.

In addition, to support a more mature model of capability and increasing transparency around the required behaviours and skills needed for now and into the future, we have commenced the rollout of a company-wide capability framework. This is a practical resource that provides team members with a framework for defining what it means to be successful at Officeworks and the skills and capabilities required for ongoing career progression. This included the roll out of resources that enable team members to drive their own development and contribute to their career in a more meaningful way.

We also undertook a process to define the technical competencies required for technologist roles across the business. Similar to the capability framework, creating transparency around technical competencies, gives team members the ability to better drive their own careers and strengthens the ability for Officeworks to support meaningful development.

In November 2022, we launched LinkedIn Learning as a resource for salaried team members, providing high-quality online learning content that allows learners to drive their own learning. Since its launch, more than 900 team members have logged in with an average of 1 hour and 13 minutes of content viewed per team member.

In FY2023, 3,600 team members were seconded to another role, promoted or transferred into another opportunity within the business.

Committed to a hybrid working model, we created Officeworks Moments, a helpful guide for team members to reference what moments should take place and where. In our hybrid working model, Officeworks Moments capture the common people experiences and interactions that should be face-to-face, while allowing team members to make decisions on working days that are right for them and the business, ensuring a balance of connection, flexibility and productivity.

To further highlight Officeworks' commitment to building a capable team with a strong sense of belonging, in May 2023, Officeworks' Support Centre team members moved from East Bentleigh to a newly refurbished office located in Chadstone, Victoria. The new building has obtained a 6-star Green Star rating, which addresses a significant number of environmental and social issues showcasing our commitment to making a positive difference to people and the planet.

Focus for FY2024

We will continue to invest in several key areas to enable our team members to grow their career, skills and knowledge to enable them to adapt to new innovations and challenges and build their capabilities to succeed in their professional lives now and into the future.

Examples of this include building out career pathways for selected roles, stronger self-serve resources to empower team members to drive their own learning, continuing to build and implement practical resources to support the efficiency of our capability framework and delivering a leadership strategy to strengthen our leadership capability for tomorrow's challenges.

Community & Sustainability

Raise $5 million for local causes

What's the issue?

We are committed to supporting the local communities where we live and work and are passionate about building meaningful connections that help others to overcome challenging circumstances and thrive.

To best support the diverse needs of our local communities, we continue to empower our team members across Australia to support causes and organisations in ways that are most meaningful to their local community.

What are we doing?

Our annual Officeworks Make a Difference Appeal (Appeal) allows customers to donate in stores or online, contributing financial support to local and regional causes. In FY2023, the Appeal focused on supporting charities that enable children to learn, create and connect for a sustainable future and included 15 charities and organisations that have a strong focus on education, sustainability and biodiversity.

These organisations include; Learning Links, which provides educational resources to children facing learning challenges, Brighter Access, which helps individuals and families experiencing disability, Zoos Victoria, which is on a mission to educate children to fight wildlife extinction.

One of the beneficiaries of this year's Appeal was Lids4Kids, a Canberra-based charity committed to collecting every plastic lid, that can't currently be recycled in Australia and preventing them from going to landfill. Lids4Kids partners with small plastic manufacturers to repurpose plastic lids for projects that benefit the community, like recycled plastic park benches and cubby house roof tiles.

Tim Miller, the brains behind Lids4Kids, launched the project on Facebook in 2019. In partnering with Officeworks, Tim hopes to spread the word about the environmental impacts posed by small plastics and encourages us all to do our part in closing the loop. ‘A big goal for us is educating and empowering kids to be the ambassadors and champions of the project. We believe that regardless of your age or your physical capacity, you have something valuable to offer your community, Tim said.’

Tim and his team of volunteers also offer workshops for schools, where students get hands-on experience sorting and shredding plastic lids before making their own recycled plastic products, such as coasters, clocks and pens. The funds raised through the Appeal will help Lids4Kids continue to run its workshops for free, while also helping to purchase more specialised machines to process even more plastics into usable goods.

The fundraising efforts of our customers and teams help to ensure these organisations, can continue their important work within their local communities and help make a positive difference to the lives of children. Together with our customers, in FY2023, we raised $950,000 and supported 15 organisations across the country as part of our Officeworks Make a Difference Appeal.

Our longest running fundraiser, The RSL Poppy and ANZAC Appeal, saw team members and customers pay their respects to all who have served in defence of our country through the sale of ANZAC pins and poppies. The ANZAC Appeal continues to support veterans and their families in their time of need. Together with our customers, Officeworks donated $70,000 to the RSL ANZAC Appeal to help important life-changing work in supporting more than 1.5 million Australians who have served or sacrificed in wars, conflicts and peacekeeping operations.

Focus for FY2024

We will continue to raise funds through our annual Officeworks Make a Difference Appeal, responding to the unique challenges our local communities are facing. Our focus will be directed on diversifying our fundraising streams and exploring further opportunities for team members to actively participate across the business.

Community & Sustainability

Help 30,000 Australian students who need it most

What's the issue?

Across Australia, there remains a significant gap in education standards between students who are living in disadvantaged circumstances and those who are not.

This disparity is especially prevalent in remote Indigenous communities, where literacy and numeracy levels are substantially lower than non-Indigenous communities.

What are we doing?

As a leading provider of educational resources for early learning centres, primary and secondary schools, we fundamentally believe every child should have equal access to a quality education and are committed to promoting strong educational outcomes for all Australian students, no matter their circumstances.

Together with decade-long partners, The Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation (ALNF) and The Smith Family, we continue to identify opportunities and causes that support students who need it most. This includes helping to raise language, literacy and numeracy standards in Indigenous communities across Australia through our partnership with ALNF, and by providing scholarships and contributing to educational costs such as books, excursions, and uniforms through our work with The Smith Family.

During FY2023, thanks to the generosity of our team and customers, we helped 7,640 Australian students with sponsorships and educational resources and raised $2.1 million through our Literacy is Freedom Appeal with ALNF and our Back-to-School Appeal with The Smith Family.

In addition to our annual appeals, we focused on donating educational materials to Australian students who need it most. This included providing 287 retired laptops to students of The Smith Family to provide them with access to the vital digital resources and technology required for learning and educational development.

Aiming to uplift and provide support to Australian children in rural communities, Officeworks helped more than 1,000 students in rural and remote Australian schools via community organisation, Doin' it for Rural Aussie Kids, through in-kind donations of printing and stationery items.

To continue our strong focus on supporting education in remote Indigenous communities, the Officeworks Stuart Park store team helped make bigger things happen for a local pre-school in the Indigenous community of Angurugu, located 650 kilometers east of the store in the East Arnhem Land Region in the Northern Territory. Angurugu School is the first pre-school in the local area and is supported by community Elders and volunteer teachers to enable students to learn about their culture and country, in conjunction with early childhood development programs. To support the pre-school students throughout the year and to cover the cost of educational materials, Officeworks Stuart Park donated more than $900 worth of educational and arts and crafts supplies to Angurugu School, including puzzles, activity sets, art smocks, paint sets, scrapbooks and wooden musical instruments.

As part of our People and Planet Positive Commitments, we set a target of helping 30,000 students who need it most by 2025. We have surpassed this goal having helped more than 40,000 students across Australia.

Focus for FY2024

We will continue to work with ALNF, The Smith Family and our team members and customers to provide support where it is needed most. We will further progress initiatives that aim to deliver year-round support to our partners and explore ways we can help bridge the digital divide for Indigenous and disadvantaged students across the country.

Community & Sustainability

Provide a helping hand to 50,000 small businesses when they need us

What's the issue?

Small businesses are the backbone of our communities and rely on us to help them start, run and grow their operations. We work hard to support our small business customers, as we know they are struggling with the pressure of rising costs, following the disruption of the pandemic and the macro-economic conditions. We are committed to providing a helping hand to small businesses when they need it most.

What are we doing?

With a renewed focus and dedicated support from our local community engagement team, providing support to our small business customers continues to be a priority as one of our long-term commitments. In FY2023, we provided in-kind support to more than 5,000 small businesses when they've needed it most, to help them rebuild post pandemic and provide relief as cost pressures increased.

Our store teams continue to be encouraged and measured on the connections they create in their local communities, engaging with small businesses, local schools, community groups and not-for profit organisations to ensure we can use our scale to help as many small businesses as possible. This has been a successful approach, and our teams have built more meaningful and long-term connections within their local communities as a result.

In FY2023, Officeworks supported local Queensland education organisation, Speakeze. Speakeze aims to use the elements of public speaking to increase self-confidence and self-esteem among students, while providing them with tangible and practical speaking skills. Through their BLAH program, a local Townsville initiative, students from grade four through to grade 12 took part in coaching sessions at James Cook University, on-site school workshops and fun challenges and competitions that taught students the skills of public speaking, including speech structure, voice tools, pitch, pace, volume, gestures and stance. Through our support of in-kind printing and prizes, Speakeze has been able to raise awareness of its organisation, the BLAH program and give thanks to their teachers, students and supporters, who are incredibly important to their operations.

Founder of Speakeze, Joanna Keune, says: ‘The contribution from Officeworks has reached 243 kids who received BLAH coaching around North Queensland. In its inaugural year, BLAH would not have proceeded without the printing and prize support of Officeworks. We are so grateful to Officeworks for supporting our initiative and thank you so much on behalf of the students. Officeworks' support is truly priceless.’

Another way we build meaningful connections with the local communities where we live and work is through our Store Meaningful Contributions Program, where we empower our team to foster relationships within our local communities and give back in ways that are right and relevant. This includes in-kind donations of products and services to local organisations.

Focus for FY2024

Our team remains focused on progressing towards our commitment of helping 50,000 small businesses by 2025. We will adapt our strategies to learn more about our local small business communities, identify gaps and provide support in the way of products, services and up-skilling opportunities to support them to start, run, grow and thrive in the years ahead.

Community & Sustainability

Enable positive change for 15,000 workers in our supply chain

What's the issue?

We are committed to upholding and respecting human rights within our own operations, throughout our supply chain and for our customers. We are committed to driving a culture of integrity and accountability, where team members, including workers in our global supply chain, can raise a concern and have their voices heard.

As a leading retailer of technology, office and educational supplies, thousands of our products come from all around the world and are often manufactured in countries, where laws designed to protect workers' rights are not effective or adequately enforced.

What are we doing?

Our ethical sourcing program continues to evolve in line with industry developments and is guided by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which highlights the responsibility of businesses to uphold and respect human rights within all their operations.

We believe all workers throughout our supply chain have a right to operate in a safe environment of their choosing and that taking care of employees is better for people and the businesses they work for.

To complement our ethical sourcing audit program, with an aim to improve worker wellbeing and engagement within our direct supply chain, we continued to implement our worker survey program to better understand working conditions and employee concerns in our global supply chain. The worker survey program allows us to continuously engage with workers to identify concerns that might not have been captured during audits and to work with factory management to take appropriate actions to embed positive change for workers.

The survey captures worker sentiment across multiple areas including grievance mechanism, wages and working hours, workplace wellbeing, environment, health and safety, productivity and stability. Following our successful implementation in four factories in FY2022, this was the third year we have run our worker survey program, and FY2023, we engaged 1,810 workers in eight factories.

During the first round of worker surveys, workers shared their concerns, which included lack of trust in internal grievance channels, lack of understanding of how wages are calculated, feeling that wages were unfair and a hesitation to speak up at work.

Based on worker feedback collected in the first round of surveys, we collaborated with factory management to implement appropriate actions to address their concerns and improve the overall working conditions at each site. This included rewarding workers for providing their feedback, introducing several team member engagement activities including holding town halls, organising additional activities to encourage worker belonging, monthly meetings with worker representatives and quarterly surveys to continue to ensure concerns were being addressed. In addition, factory management increased the representation of women in managerial roles and published non-discrimination policies for all workers.

As part of the improvements to address worker concerns, wage calculations were conducted to review wage fairness, while training on wage calculation, grievances as well as creating an anonymous channel for wage complaints were established to ensure workers had the appropriate mechanisms in place to provide ongoing feedback.

Six months after the first round of surveys, we conducted follow up surveys to understand worker sentiment at eight of these sites and saw an improvement in worker sentiment of 13 per cent, enabling positive change to 3,390 workers.

After three years of working collaboratively with our suppliers, we have gathered valuable program insights into the outcomes of this work, enabling us to expand our worker voice program, take meaningful action on direct worker feedback, and continue to progress toward our commitment.

Focus for FY2024

We will continue to expand our worker voice program and support our partners to realise the benefits of taking meaningful action on direct worker feedback as we work towards our goal of enabling positive change for 15,000 workers in our supply chain by 2025.

Community & Sustainability

Work towards eradicating modern slavery

What's the issue?

Globally, it is estimated there are currently 50 million people living in modern slavery. The Australian Department of Home Affairs defines modern slavery as situations where coercion threats, or deception are used to exploit people and undermine their freedom. Examples of common modern slavery practises today include servitude, forced labour, forced marriage, the worst forms of child labour, debt bondage, deceptive recruiting for labour or services and human trafficking.

The legislation, or the Modern Slavery Act, created an obligation in 2019 for businesses to report any risks of modern slavery in their supply chains and the actions they were taking to mitigate these risks. However, new data from the United Nations and Australian organisation, Walk Free, shows that modern slavery has increased since that time. In today's highly globalised world, where supply chains are long and complex, modern slavery presents a serious issue that all businesses need to work together to unite against and eradicate.

What are we doing?

Since 2016, we have released our annual Modern Slavery Statement in conjunction with Wesfarmers. This statement summarises the steps taken by Officeworks and Wesfarmers more broadly, to identify and mitigate the risk of modern slavery in our operations and supply chains. We seek to work with our suppliers and non-government organisations to remediate and scale impact and promote a oordinated approach to tackling these complex modern slavery issues.

We are committed to upholding and respecting human rights within our own operations, throughout our supply chain and for our customers and all suppliers of goods and services. As a result all suppliers must adhere to our Ethical Sourcing and Modern Slavery Policy, which outlines the minimum standards required to work with us. To date, we have mapped more than 28,400 products to the primary site of manufacturing (Tier One), with 1,111 manufacturers involved in our ethical sourcing program.

In addition, we take steps to work collaboratively with all suppliers, including goods purchased as part of our operations and their factories, to identify and mitigate the risks of modern slavery in their supply chain (Tier Two). This includes either providing evidence to demonstrate there is already a robust social compliance auditing program in place, disclosing the manufacturing site of products, completing self-assessment questionnaires to assess risk and completing independent audits when requested.

In FY2023, 626 third party audits were reviewed and 914 major non-conformances were remediated, resulting in 168 factories improving their factory rating.

We recognise Australia is not immune to issues relating to worker exploitation, and our ethical sourcing program extends to service providers located here. These providers are assessed for brand risk according to the type of service provided and the management of ethical and responsible sourcing risks. Service providers that were identified as medium-high risk were asked to complete our services risk assessment questionnaire and close out any high-risk findings or conduct an audit if required.

Additionally, since 2021, we have been a member of the Cleaning Accountability Framework, a multi-stakeholder organisation that exists to end exploitation and improve labour standards within the local cleaning industry. As part of our commitment in this space, third-party social compliance audits on cleaning and security guards were conducted in FY2023, with all findings either remediated or currently in the process of being remediated.

Our ethical sourcing program continues to mature and we remain focused on working with suppliers to develop long-term relationships and embed our Ethical Sourcing and Modern Slavery Policy requirements. Due to a focus over the past five years in our private label supply chain, we have already seen demonstrable improvement in social compliance levels and a decrease in the number of critical breaches at private label sites.

Focus for FY2024

We continue to review and enhance our modern slavery program to ensure it addresses any emerging risks with the aim of further increasing visibility throughout our supply chain, as well as embedding our ethical sourcing program in areas that may not currently be covered. This includes refreshing our service provider questionnaire to better target indicators of forced labour and extend our program to suppliers beyond Tier One suppliers. We will continue to collaborate with other organisations to support the eradication of modern slavery and take meaningful actions to enable positive change for workers in our supply chain.

Community & Sustainability

We will use data responsibly and ethically

What's the issue?

We recognise the critical importance data governance plays in today's digital world and understand protecting an individual’s privacy and ethical data practices are fundamental to building trust and fostering long-term relationships with our customers, team members and partners.

As part of our commitment to using data responsibly and ethically, we are focused on continually enhancing our data governance frameworks, developing continuous improvement roadmaps and investing in data governance and protection measures to protect personal information.

What are we doing?

Our commitment to data governance, in line with customer expectations, continues to strengthen as we assess and improve our data governance practices, by adapting to the evolving regulatory landscape, cyber threats and emerging technological advancements.

At the core of our data governance strategy is a focus on customer privacy and an understanding that customers trust us with their personal information. We continue to strengthen and manage our data governance in line with customer expectations and are committed to safeguarding their privacy rights. This includes adhering to privacy regulations, such as the Australian Privacy Principals, and continuously updating policies to align with evolving customer expectations and legislative requirements.

As part of this focus, Officeworks has a Data and Privacy Governance Council, whose mission is to ensure our data assets are effectively managed, secured, compliant and used responsibly and ethically. This mission is achieved by ensuring we have the appropriate systems and resources in place, while establishing and enforcing policies, procedures, and standards that govern the collection, storage, use and destruction of data across our business.

Our enhanced data governance framework reflects our commitment to ensuring customer privacy, ethical data practices, and enhancing the overall customer shopping experience. By upholding high standards of data governance, we can ensure our customers' personal information remains secure, their trust is maintained, and their interactions with our brand are enriched.

We remain committed to continuous improvement, transparency and fostering a culture of ethical data stewardship across the business and will continue to adapt and respond to the evolving nature of data management.

Focus for FY2024

We are committed to using data responsibly and ethically and continue to ensure improvement transparency, and regularly assess and refine our high standards of data governance and privacy practices to ensure they remain effective and relevant in a rapidly evolving digital landscape. We recognise the importance of maintaining appropriate data security controls and will continue to ensure the safety and integrity of data by employing robust security measures and 24/7 security monitoring by a dedicated security operations centre.

Community & Sustainability

Use 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2025

What's the issue?

The effects of climate change are evident around the world with warmer temperatures changing weather patterns and disrupting the balance of nature. To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, science indicates we need to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius and preferably below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Globally, this means we need to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, which requires the collective efforts of individuals, businesses, governments and communities.

What are we doing?

We recognise the role we play in demonstrating positive climate action, advocating for change, and driving collaboration across the retail industry as part of the transition to using 100 per cent renewable energy.

We are working towards our goal to use 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025, as part of our roadmap to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030, and our internal Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions reduction targets of 25 cent by FY2025, based on an FY2018 baseline.

In FY2023, we reduced emissions by 12 per cent, reaching our FY2025 Scope 1 and Scope 2 target two years in advance. Our approach is to use less energy by investing in energy efficiency initiatives, such as our LED rollouts and building energy management system (BEMS) implementations. We also generate clean energy on site through the installation of onsite solar power systems and we will procure the balance of our electricity needs through renewable energy sources.

As part of our focus on procuring clean energy, in FY2023 we continued our long-term partnership with clean energy provider, CleanCo. As part of the agreement, by 2025, all our Queensland sites will have the balance of their renewable electricity provided by CleanCo, generated by large-scale wind and solar farms. In addition, in May 2023, we signed an agreement for 100 per cent renewable energy in the Northern Territory.

In June 2023, we announced the installation of our first 100-kWh lithium battery and 100 kW of solar PV in our Warana store on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, to achieve our goal of operating the store on 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025. The 1,722 square metre store has been working towards operating off 100 per cent renewable energy for two years and has previously implemented sustainability measures, including LED light fixtures, BEMS, thermal coating, double insulation in the roof and soon to launch fast-charging electric vehicle stations.

While Warana is our first store capable of using 100 per cent renewable energy, a growing portion of our store network uses onsite generation and where possible, renewable electricity procurement. The launch of our first behind the meter green energy powered store in Warana is another significant step forward in our efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and operate in a sustainable way.

Focus for FY2024

We will continue to explore further renewable energy opportunities, continue the roll out of our solar PV and identify long-term clean energy agreements as we work towards 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025.

Community & Sustainability

Plant two million trees on behalf of our customers

What's the issue?

Forests play a critical role in biodiversity, providing vital ecosystems to 80 per cent of the Earth's land animals. The ability to stop biodiversity loss is heavily dependent on the ability to stop forest loss. Trees play an important role in capturing and storing greenhouse gases, providing crucial habitat for native species, helping maintain freshwater reserves and limiting soil erosion. Unfortunately, across Australia, the loss of natural landscapes is contributing to the increased number of threatened species, while tree clearing contributes to soil erosion and drought.

What are we doing?

We recognise regenerating Australian landscapes is an important issue that our team and customers care strongly about. Through large scale tree planting and land restoration projects, the impacts caused by tree loss can be reversed over time, creating habitats and wildlife corridors that help native wildlife move more easily through the landscape in search of food, shelter and breeding partners. Improved landscape connectivity also helps increase wildlife resilience to the impacts of climate change and allows them to flourish in their natural environment. It also supports local landholders to improve the health of their land and the communities where they live.

Through our Restoring Australia Initiative, we are committed to planting two trees for every one used, based on the weight of paper based products purchased by our customers. Launched in 2017, in partnership with Greening Australia, we have planted more than 1.45 million native trees and provided habitat for native wildlife across more than 1,900 hectares in a variety of landscapes across the country. In FY2023, the initiative planted a further 210,000 trees across 190 hectares of land.

We have continued to plant trees across Western Australia’s Wheatbelt region, taking the total trees planted in this region to over 462,300 and restoring over 370 hectares of habitat. These plantings have been designed to improve habitat for several threatened species, including the endangered Carnaby's Black Cockatoo. In addition, we continued to plant trees in Victoria across the Central Otways and Victorian Volcanic Plains with the total trees planted in Victoria now reaching more than 403,000, restoring more than 300 hectares of habitat for many endangered animals such as the Greater Glider, South-Eastern Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo and Corangamite Water Skink. Lastly the total number of trees planted across Tasmania extended to over 200,000 across over 400 hectares. Planting across Tasmania aims to support the last refuge in Australia for many small mammals, such as the Eastern Barred Bandicoot, Eastern Quoll and Eastern Bettong.

Our Restoring Australia initiative forms part of our long-term approach to supporting our team, enhancing our connection to our local communities, taking positive climate action and sourcing products in sustainable and responsible ways.

Through our Restoring Australia initiative, we can help to achieve restoration at scale across Australia and put vegetation back into the landscape for future generations, habitats and species to thrive. With the help of our team, customers and our 58 major partners of this initiative, we can truly make a lasting and positive difference by putting people and the planet at the heart of what we do.

Focus for FY2024

We will continue our work with Greening Australia to deliver on our commitment to plant two million trees by 2025. We're committed to working closely with our major partners in this initiative and acknowledging their support in being a Platinum, Gold, Silver or Bronze supporter, while encouraging more suppliers to get involved. We will continue to encourage our customers to shop more sustainably at Officeworks and support them to purchase our paper and wood-based products and in doing so, help restore Australian landscapes through our Restoring Australia initiative.

Community & Sustainability

Reduce emissions in our supply chain

What's the issue?

The way businesses and organisations contribute to greenhouse gas emissions can vary and include activities they undertake directly (Scope 1 and 2) and indirectly (Scope 3),that may occur throughout their value chain. International standards categorise these activities into three groups known as Scopes. This helps to provide a consistent way to measure, monitor and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Scope 3 emissions are activities that occur throughout the supply chain, such as the raw materials used, and the way goods are manufactured and transported. For a retailer, these emissions are often much more significant than those caused from activities within their direct control.

What are we doing?

We are committed to reducing our Scope 3 emissions and taking meaningful climate action. As part of our commitment to use 100 per cent renewable energy by 2025 and have net-zero emissions by 2030, we have prioritised several initiatives designed to reduce our supply chain emissions impact and assist with setting a future Scope 3 emissions target.

Providing a wider range of People and Planet Positive products is one of the initiatives helping to reduce Scope 3 emissions. With more than 2,200 products available in the range, customers can choose to shop the products they need, while knowing they also hold sustainable attributes, including recycled content, wooden materials and certified cotton as well as items that are refillable, recyclable or that can be reused.

From ranging sustainable items to offering sustainable solutions for end of life, recycling also helps decrease emissions by reducing future energy consumption. Using recycled materials to make new products avoids emissions that would result from extracting or mining virgin materials. Our Bring it Back program provides a significant opportunity to reduce our Scope 3 emissions and aims to give customers easier ways to recycle their computers, laptops, printers, toner cartridges and other computer accessories and technology for free.

Focusing on the expansion of programs where we can contribute to a more circular economy is also key to lowering Scope 3 emissions. We have invested in and partnered with Circonomy, Australia's first recovery, repair and resale service, to support us in achieving our commitment of repairing, repurposing and recycling 17,000 tonnes of unwanted products through our Bring it Back program. By prioritising repair and reuse over recycling, we can keep existing products within circularity and have a valuable solution to extending the life of goods, reducing the impact associated with discarding unrecyclable items and components to landfill, while preserving and reducing the reliance on limited natural resources.

In addition, through our partnership with Greening Australia, our Restoring Australia initiative ensures two trees are planted for every one used, based on the weight of paper purchased by our customers, offsetting carbon emissions and contributing to a sustainable future.

Focus for FY2024

Despite having achieved our 2025 target, we will look to further reduce our Scope 1 and 2 emissions in our operations and throughout our supply chain. Our focus will shift to delivering a Scope 3 target. We are working with Wesfarmers and industry experts to develop the necessary data and insights that will assist us to determine an accountable methodology to record and report Scope 3 emissions. We will continue to engage with our own brand suppliers regarding the manufacturing and transportation of products to assist them in lowering emissions where possible.

Become a zero-waste business

Become a zero-waste business

What's the issue?

Across the globe, businesses generate a large amount of waste that goes to landfill, emitting greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change.

Materials that could have been recycled, reused, repurposed and/or remanufactured often end up in landfill, creating unnecessary costs and requiring the industry to use virgin materials from natural finite resources. Excess waste is generated through a lack of sustainable processes and business operations, as well as unsustainable and unnecessary packaging.

The solution to this problem is at the core of circular economy principles, which are designed to eliminate waste, keep materials in use for longer and regenerate natural systems. By rethinking how we design, make, use, and dispose of materials, businesses, communities and households can make better use of the resources we have and reduce waste in the process.

What are we doing?

We are focused on applying circular principles to our business operations by reshaping how we collectively think and dispose of waste. Our approach is underpinned by eliminating and designing out unnecessary waste and pollution, keeping products, materials and precious resources within our value chain, and regenerating natural systems.

Our disciplined approach to waste management focuses on the priorities of avoid, reduce, reuse, repair and recycle, with landfill as the least preferred option. Even with notable business growth, our zero-waste cultural mindset has seen a significant decrease in the waste sent to landfill from 2,500 tonnes in FY2017 to 670 tonnes in FY2023, and an increase in our recycling rates from 63 per cent to 88 per cent over that period.

Through careful planning, we are working to eliminate waste across all levels and locations of our business. In FY2023, we have achieved an eight per cent reduction in total waste generation mix at 5,482 tonnes comparative to a total waste generation mix of 5,991 tonnes in FY2022. While recycling rates have decreased to an average of 88 per cent, compared to 89 per cent to FY2022, we have seen a high number of our store network achieve recycling rates of over 90 per cent.

We are continuing our journey of targeting problematic landfill streams such as furniture, by increasing our ability to repair items onsite as well as creating a solution for bulky items through our partnership with Circonomy, Australia's first recovery, repair and resale service. The partnership has allowed us to have a more sophisticated approach to handling imperfect products and eliminate some of the costly and inefficient processes that come with managing unsellable or damaged products.

By prioritising repair and reuse over recycling, we have been able to keep existing products within circulation and in turn, have a valuable solution to extending the life of goods, reducing the impact associated with discarding un-recyclable items and components to landfill, while preserving and reducing the reliance on limited natural resources.

In addition, as we work to become a zero-waste business, we are focused on gaining more insights into waste and recycling opportunities, by working and communicating more closely with our store teams to understand and identify their specific waste needs. By implementing improved reporting and scheduling processes, we can make it easier and more accessible for our team members to troubleshoot and raise awareness of waste challenges. By addressing these issues, we have been able to make informed decisions on our objectives and priorities and empower our teams to take an innovative approach to addressing problematic waste systems.

Focus for FY2024

We plan to continue to focus on working closely with team members across the business through an education, engagement and recognition program that aims to raise awareness and knowledge of sustainable waste and recycling processes and increase diversion rates. We plan to deliver training for team members and our cleaners and create accessible content to boost knowledge and participation in our circular economy programs. In addition, through our investment in and partnership with Circonomy, we will look to continue to expand our furniture repair and repurpose program to be available in more stores and regions across Australia.

Community & Sustainability

Repair, repurpose or recycle 17,000 tonnes of unwanted products

What's the issue?

The way businesses, households and communities currently dispose of e-waste and other used and unwanted items, by throwing them away as waste, contributes to environmental issues like climate change and biodiversity loss.

In addition, electronics often contain and release harmful chemicals into the atmosphere leading to air, soil and water pollution. By keeping products in use for longer, by repairing or repurposing them, or reusing and recycling them, we can reduce these impacts and transition to a more circular economy.

What are we doing?

We know Australians are increasingly looking for ways to responsibly dispose of their unwanted goods, including e-waste. As a large retailer of technology products, we launched our Bring it Back program to create an easy and accessible way for customers to recycle their computers, laptops, printers, ink cartridges and other computer accessories for free. Since its inception in 2015, the program has diverted more than 9,000 tonnes of resources from landfill. In FY2023, 2,719 total tonnes of unwanted products were diverted from landfill through our Bring it Back program.

To make the disposing of e-waste even more accessible to our customers, we launched a partnership with Moorup, a company whose mission is to extend the life of electronic devices. Through this partnership, customers can trade in their mobile phones, smart watches, computers and laptops through our website in exchange for and Officeworks gift card. To date, we have seen strong interest in this service with 2,300 devices successfully traded in during FY2023 and issued 3,650 gift cards since the program's inception in September 2022.

To make it easier to recycle pens and markers, we continued to provide an accessible recycling option in stores through our Bring it Back program and for schools through our School Pens and Marker Recycling initiative. We encouraged the school community to get involved and together, we have recycled 175 pen recycling boxes since the program's inception, which equates to over 600kilograms of pens saved from landfill. In total for FY2023, we have collected 19.86 tonnes of writing instruments to be diverted from landfill for recycling, a 35 per cent increase on FY2022.

Since 2019, we have partnered with Circonomy, Australia's first recovery, repair and resale service, to contribute to a more circular economy. In FY2023, 48 tonnes of furniture items were repaired, repurposed and resold by Circonomy.

FY2023 saw our program expand to include a 10-week furniture repair trial across 10 Officeworks stores in Victoria, with the aim of reducing waste and keeping returned or damaged products at their highest value for longer. A key objective of the program was to trial a more sophisticated approach to handling imperfect or damaged products, to eliminate some of the costly and inefficient processes that come with managing unsellable or damaged furniture while reducing waste to landfill. The trial saw ~5,500 kilograms of faulty and unsellable pieces of furniture repaired and resold through our stores, resulting in operational, commercial and environmental benefits to the business.

Focus for FY2024

We will continue to raise awareness of our Bring it Back and tech trade-in program, encouraging more Australians to recycle and repurpose eligible products with us. We will continue to focus on enhancing our customer educational content and recycling offerings, particularly through schools. In addition, we'll continue to work closely with Circonomy to broaden our circular economy program across our store network to repair, reuse and repurpose a greater volume of items, as we work towards our 2025 goal of repairing, repurposing or recycling 17,000 tonnes of unwanted products.

Find out what your local store accepts by clicking here
All packaging to be reusable or recyclable

All packaging to be reusable or recyclable

What's the issue?

Packaging plays an important role in protecting and transporting the products we buy, but unless it is sustainably designed and properly disposed of, it often ends up in landfill. Packaging is identified in three types, primary packaging which is the packaging that products are purchased in, secondary packaging, which accommodates deliveries and tertiary packaging which is packaging that supports the distribution of goods from manufacturers to warehouses.

Combined, the volume of materials and resources used across all packaging types is significant. Every day, more innovative and sustainable packaging solutions are becoming available, providing more sustainable solutions to packaging and making a positive difference to the environment.

What are we doing?

The landscape for recyclable packaging changed in FY2023 with the collapse of RedCycle, which saw materials thats were once considered recyclable, being deemed non-recyclable. As such, the recyclability of our own brand products slipped backwards from a recyclability rate on product packaging from 99.8 per cent last year to 64 per cent over the period, with all primary packaging components currently at 79 per cent recyclable.

We have been working towards more sustainable packaging solutions for our products for several years, and this commitment continues to be a strong focus area across our business. Our Sustainable Packaging Policy outlines the expectations and guidelines for our suppliers to reduce the environmental impacts caused by product packaging, including requiring them to deliver goods to Officeworks on reusable pallets.

We have continued to focus on collaborating with our partners and suppliers to increase the innovation of our product packaging to achieve our packaging targets. By removing small and often non-recyclable packaging components, such as nylon cable ties, we can take important steps towards moving to fully recyclable packaging across our product ranges.

Through packaging innovation and making simple swaps, like swapping out plastic ties for paper ties, we have been able to remove 260,000 pieces of plastic from primary packaging in FY2023. Over the last three years the annual equivalent of 43 million pieces of plastic were removed from product packaging or through the removal of single use plastic products.

Creative packaging design does not stop with swapping out materials and if we can remove packaging altogether, we will. An example of this innovation includes the evolution of the packaging on our own-brand rulers where we have progressed from plastic wrap packaging, towards paper-based packaging with many now having no packaging at all. This means many of our rulers now have a simple hole drilled into them so they can still be displayed on the shelf, with the barcode printed directly on the product so it can be scanned at point of sale. This is just one example of how small changes to the design of our products can be better for the environment, reduce costs and still be operational for our store team members and our customers.

We are a proud member of the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), a not-for-profit organisation leading the development of a circular economy for packaging in Australia. APCO’s vision is to create a packaging value chain that collaborates to keep packaging materials out of landfill, to retain the maximum value of the materials, energy and labour within the local economy. As part of this membership, we can assess the packaging recyclability of every new product and look to make improvements in packaging across current ranges.

Focus for FY2024

We will continue to assess and collaborate with suppliers to ensure their packaging and product lines are easily recyclable and eliminate unnecessary materials, including problematic plastics. We will continue to explore ways for our delivery packaging to be optimised to reduce unnecessary materials and provide reusable options, where possible, without compromising on product protection.

Community & Sustainability

Zero deforestation in our supply chain

What's the issue?

Forests play a key role in helping to slow the pace of climate change by absorbing and storing greenhouse gases, purifying water and providing habitat to 80 per cent of the Earth's land animals.

However, deforestation is sacrificing the long-term benefits of standing trees for the short-term gain of fuel and materials for manufacturing and construction, with more than 193 million acres - the equivalent of 39 million Melbourne Cricket Grounds of mountain forests lost across the world in the past two decades, which is more than seven per cent of all that exists.

The main drivers of this loss are logging, the expansion of agriculture, and wildfires, making deforestation a critical global issue with serious environmental, social, and economic implications.

What are we doing?

As a large retailer of paper and wood-based products, we are committed to the sustainable sourcing of wood-fibre and take a zero-tolerance approach to illegally logged timber entering our supply chain. Our approach is underpinned by our Sustainable Wood-Fibre Sourcing Policy, credible third-party certification and supply chain transparency requirements to inform sourcing decisions.

To support the industry to transition to more sustainable forestry practises, and as part of our Sustainable Wood-Fibre Sourcing Policy, by December 2025 all products containing paper and wood in our product ranges must demonstrate they are free from deforestation. This can be done via Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, being made from 100 per cent recycled sources, being made from fast growing fibres, with evidence that they have been harvested legally and sustainably, or through evidence of additional due diligence or responsible forestry initiatives the supplier undertakes to ensure there is no deforestation.

In addition, Officeworks demonstrates its dedication to advancing environmentally sound, socially beneficial and economically viable forest management practices, through our partnership with FSC. As a Promotional Licence Holder, we take proactive measures to demonstrate our support for the protection of global forests from the detrimental impacts of illegal logging and deforestation and in doing so, contribute to the preservation of communities and wildlife that depend on these indispensable ecosystems.

While we are focused on ensuring there is zero deforestation in our supply chain, at the same time through our Restoring Australia initiative, we are committed to regenerating and restoring natural landscapes across Australia. Since launching our two-for-one tree planting program in 2017, we have planted a total of 1.45 million trees across 1,954 hectares on behalf of our customers.

Focus for FY2024

We will continue to work with our suppliers to transition more wood-based products to FSC certified or 100 per cent recycled sources, move more products from virgin fibres to recycled fibres and have transition plans in place for all current products that do not meet our sustainable wood-fibre sourcing target.

Community & Sustainability

Provide a wider range of People and Planet Positive products

What's the issue?

Collectively, we purchase and consume significant volumes of products that take valuable, often finite, resources to produce. We know Australians want to make more sustainable choices when they shop with us and make a positive difference to people and the planet.

What are we doing?

We recognise we have an important role to play in the lives of our team members and the local communities where we live and work. To support our customers to shop more sustainably, we are committed to providing a wider range of People and Planet Positive products that are easy to find in stores and online, while ensuring they are affordable and at a comparable quality.

Following extensive customer research, in 2020 we launched our range of People and Planet Positive products, which support our customers to make sustainable choices when shopping at Officeworks. With more than 2,200 products available in the range, customers can choose to shop and find the products they need, while knowing they also hold sustainable attributes, including recycled content, wooden materials and certified cotton as well as items that are made from plants, are refillable, recyclable or that can be reused.

In FY2023, we focused on rebuilding the foundations of our People and Planet Positive products range, from data collection through to the qualifying criteria that outlines which products can be included in the range in line with the evolving landscape of sustainable product attributes. Alongside our 11 other criteria, in FY2023, we introduced three new criteria to the product range: Indigenous Products, Certified Cotton and Recyclable products.

Indigenous products:

We value and respect the protocols, heritage and culture of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and aim to work together to continue to educate, sustain and build on this. The new 'Indigenous Products' criteria represents our ongoing commitment to reconciliation with Indigenous Australians through the celebration of culture and economic participation. Products within the 'Indigenous Products' criteria, are created or designed by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people or businesses and includes collaborations on bespoke lines of products, designed by Indigenous artists or businesses, including our range of Cultural Choice products.

Certified Cotton products:

In 2022, we launched our partnership with Better Cotton, whose mission is to help cotton communities survive and thrive, while protecting and restoring the environment. Better Cotton trains farmers to use water efficiently, care for soil health and natural habitats, reduce the use of the most harmful chemicals and respect workers' rights and wellbeing. As part of our People and Planet Positive product range, we are committed to sourcing 100 per cent of our cotton in our private label products as Better Cotton, organic cotton, Australian cotton or recycled cotton by 2025.

Recyclable products:

We know Australians are looking for more ways to dispose of unwanted goods responsibly and we are focused on how we can better support our customers to do this through accessible drop off points, such as our Bring it Back recycling stations, trade in facilities through our partnership with Moorup, and by considering what happens to the products we sell at the end of their life. To phase out more products that would traditionally end up in landfill, we are challenging our supply chain to design more products made from recyclable materials so that we can keep materials in use for longer at their highest value. We are at early stages of this project and are motivated by how many products we can create to meet this criteria over the next financial year.

We understand not all products are created equally and that's why we established our People and Planet Positive product range of icons, that are a helpful guide to make it easier for customers to identify the sustainable products within the categories they shop and why they are better for people and the planet. Through the addition of the Indigenous products, Better Cotton and Recyclable products criteria, we have created new icons to showcase the products included within these ranges, which includes an icon created and designed by Marcus Lee Design, an Indigenous owned graphic design agency based in Richmond, Victoria, to represent our 'Indigenous Products' criteria.

We continue to work towards making it easier for customers to find more sustainable products, by enhancing our website and in-store navigation and updating the packaging on our own-brand products. We are doing this without compromising on quality and ensuring products are affordable, while certifying that environmental claims can be substantiated with appropriate evidence and meet the relevant regulatory requirements.

Focus for FY2024

We will continue to build on the foundation set in FY2023 to expand the number of products sitting within our People and Planet Positive product range, including more recycled content and products that are designed by Indigenous people that support the communities where we live and work.

Through our investment in the range, we will focus on helping our customers to shop more sustainably and continue to improve the visibility of these products in our stores and online.

Community & Sustainability

Phase out problematic plastics

What's the issue?

Plastic is often seen as a useful material in product manufacturing as it is low cost and long lasting. However, some types of plastics present significant problems to the environment as they are unable to be recycled and may never break down, contributing to environmental issues on land and in our waterways.

What are we doing?

We have defined problematic plastics in the broadest sense to include:

  • Plastics that are difficult to recycle or cause significant environmental issues, such as PVC, expanded polystyrene (EPS), micro-plastics, PFAS or BPAs
  • Single-use plastic, such as items designed or intended to be discarded after a single use, such as plastic cutlery
  • Plastic that is deemed as unnecessary, which is particularly apparent in secondary packaging materials.

Following our initial focus on addressing problematic plastics in our own-brand products, such as removing polystyrene from own brand packaging in 2021, we've been focused on educating and collaborating with suppliers on the issues of problematic plastic materials to encourage similar actions to make positive change. By actively contacting each individual supplier to understand which of their products contain EPS packaging, we can monitor where these materials sit across our supply chain. We are aiming to help our customers to make more sustainable purchases by removing problematic materials that can be difficult to responsibly dispose of at home.

In addition, problematic plastics can be found in products that consumers wouldn't generally expect and it's vital that retailers and manufacturers are aware of these and are designing ways to phase these plastics out of the supply chain. This includes per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, plastic otherwise known as PFAS, which have been found across fibre-based food content packaging. These plastics are very resistant to degradation, making them possible pollutants to the environment. We sell fibre-based disposable catering supplies, such as plates and cups, and have aligned to the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation's action plan to phase out PFAS in fibre-based food contact packaging by December 2023. As of June 30, 96 per cent of our products ranged are confirmed as free from PFAS and we expect our entire range to be 100 per cent free from PFAS by 31 December 2023.

Across the last financial year, we actively aimed to reduce the number of pieces of unnecessary plastic materials in our packaging every time a new product entered our product line. With each new packaging design, we look to remove unnecessary plastic, and in the past year, we have removed over 260,000 pieces of plastic from our primary product packaging. Over the last three years the annual equivalent of over 43 million pieces of plastic were removed from product packaging or through the removal of single use plastic products.

Focus for FY2024

We will continue to investigate opportunities to remove problematic plastics by focusing on products and packaging and diving deeper into the issue of micro-plastics at product level, by identifying what own-brand products may be categorised as such. In addition, we plan to continue to remove non-recyclable plastic packaging from our own-brand products, where possible, and map out opportunities for improvement beyond primary packaging, exploring opportunities further into the supply chain, including those between our suppliers, stores, distribution centres and customers.

Continue reading in PDF

Sustainability Reports