Good for business
My business partner Cat Harding and I met with the head of facilities for a large national business recently; let’s call her Fiona. We got to discussing how her role had evolved over the past few years to focus more heavily on sustainability and social responsibilities.
The logistics and reach of Fiona’s company are complex to say the least – but its attitude and commitment to these goals is highly admirable. Once a slow moving cornerstone of the Australian business scene, it had now baked sustainability and social responsibility into every layer of its operation. It recognised this was a necessity to ensure the business continued to meet the changing expectations of its employees and customers.
It got me thinking… the responsibilities of facilities managers have evolved with a great deal of purpose over the past 10 years and it makes sense for them to be the champions of sustainability and social responsibility for their organisations. After all, it’s an integral part of an FM’s role to assess and analyse areas of the supply chain and bring together a network of suppliers who enhance the working environment. Ensuring those suppliers align with your business values and objectives is essential.
In today’s business climate, these standards assist your company to manage its reputation, operational, legal and financial risks. It
brings a whole new gamut of benefits to your brand and its stakeholders – and, importantly, to the internal culture and satisfaction levels of your teams.
A recent survey by Bain and Co found that two-thirds of survey respondents said ‘they cared more about sustainability now than three years ago’. Almost this many respondents again stated that ‘being in a sustainable business is extremely important to them’. Interest in this topic peaked among employees aged 36 to 40.
The big picture is that organisational sustainability addresses how well a company advances its environmental stewardship, financial well-being and social responsibility in all of its activities and impacts. One of the key sustainability metrics FMs across the country are working on is reducing ‘waste to landfill’ levels.
With waste disposal costs having risen by a whopping 28 percent over the past 10 years, many companies are adopting a ‘zero waste’ objective, which is proving to be a significant method in helping crunch bottom lines, as well as in addressing the demands and satisfaction levels of employees and customers on their environmental sustainability.
It’s for these (and lots of other super awesome reasons), that PonyUp for Good is a great support for FMs in achieving their sustainability and social responsibility goals.
PonyUp keeps decommissioned technology out of landfill, by collecting donated, devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops), which have already been through their depreciation cycle. Data destruction is assured through Department of Defence-accredited processes, on or off the premises. The products are then sold for reuse, meaning a more affordable and accessible solution is available for places like Africa, North Korea and other parts of Asia where these devices are used as educational aids in schools, for small business banking and in supporting new mothers with medical updates.
PonyUp has partnered with SecondBite and donates 50 percent of profits to Australia’s largest fresh food rescue charity.
SecondBite currently redistributes healthy surplus food, to create over 55,000 meals each day for people in Australia doing it tough. It’s a solid win-win scenario.
By ‘reusing’ we can prolong the life of devices for up to another seven years.
FM KPIs – THE BENEFITS OF DONATING TO PONYUP FOR GOOD:
- no ‘recycling fees’, as we work with Australia’s co-regulatory network
- contributing to your zero waste targets, by dealing with your reusable technology and removing your end of life e-waste for recycling
- efficiencies in your gross floor area metrics, by removing your ‘stored or hoarded’ old technology
- aligning with your metrics and reporting, we close the loop on your CSR KPIs by reporting back to let you know the weight of your device donations recycled or reused (kept out of landfill) and how many nutritious meals you contributed to individuals and families in need, by simply leveraging the resources your company no longer needed, and
- improving your employee satisfaction and positivity scores by sharing these environmental and social wins with your teams, while being part of something bigger.
We’re continuing to work with Fiona and her team to strengthen their strategies and we remain wonderfully impressed with the level of commitment present – having this as part of their procurement and disposal strategy is now part and parcel of their operation, because it not only makes good business sense – it’s something good to do.
Mardi Brown is the co-founder of PonyUp for Good. More information can be found at ponyupforgood.com
This article also appears in the April/May issue of Facility Management magazine.
Image copyright: rawpixel / 123RF Stock Photo
