Business View Oceania - July 2024

OfficeMax and Oceania collaborated to drive sustainable outcomes Empowering sustainable and successful workplaces is all part of OfficeMax’s vision, but what does that look like in the Care sector? As a supply partner to Oceania Healthcare for more than 10 years, OfficeMax has not only built a deep knowledge of the sector but helped the company to reach its sustainability goals, report on its climate impact, support waste reduction, and drive important cost savings. OfficeMax Sector Lead – Care, Hazel Wright explains: “Through our work with Oceania, we’ve come to deeply understand the immense pressures that facilities are under. “Inflationary pressures are impacting everything from food choices to remaining competitive on salaries for the best nursing staff. Waste is another big issue and it’s right up there. “The thing they all have in common is cost. There is a cost to topping up government subsidies when they don’t keep pace with inflation. There is a cost to losing good staff. There is a cost to disposing of healthcare waste,” says Hazel. As part of its regular range reviews with Oceania, the OfficeMax team identified that across its aged care facilities Oceania was using 27 different bin liners. “A combination of simply understanding their business and its sustainability goals, and our unique ability to drive value through consolidation, enabled us to get this down to 15 different products,” says Hazel. “Our approach is to understand who is using what, where they’re using it and what they’re using it for. We were able to bring together Oceania’s environment specialists and its care centre managers to get a win-win. For example, we found that in some cases, because the wrong bags were being used for certain waste, workers were ‘double bagging’.” This is just one example of how OfficeMax has supported Oceania to achieve its goals. Another is helping the company to understand carbon emissions related to its Scope 3 sources such as the transportation of materials or goods purchased from OfficeMax’s distribution centres. “We developed a calculator to calculate the GHG emissions associated with the transportation of our products. Independently verified by Toitū Envirocare, the calculator has enabled Oceania to include this robust data within its GHG Emissions Inventory reports.” This matters because, as an NZX listed company, Oceania has climate disclosure and reporting requirements, and because it has helped the company to save on operational costs – savings that can be put towards patient care.