The 2011 Oracle World Retail Awards taking place this week in Berlin marks a very special moment for one of Australia’s hardest working retailers, The Salvation Army.
Transforming trash into treasure has become big business for the Salvation Army, with the Salvos in the running to become the Responsible Retailer of the Year. The stores will be competing against Marks & Spencer, Kingfisher PLC, Coop Cooperative, The Co-operative Food and Grupo Po de Aucar.
This award honours the retailer who the judges feel demonstrate that they are outstanding corporate citizens. Those retailers highlighted by this award will be setting world class standards of best practice in corporate responsibility but above all can demonstrate how they have significantly impacted their key stakeholders including employees, suppliers, customers and the community in which it operates.
Salvos Stores general manager Neville Barrett said the nomination showed how the stores had been transformed from simple charity outlets in the 1880s to having millions of customers. “They (the stores) started… to help people in crisis, they were focused on helping poor people with clothing and assisting their children,” Barrett said in a statement on Saturday.
“Today in the Eastern Territory (covering NSW, Qld and the ACT) there are 106 stores. We serve over 4 million people a year. We get customers from all walks of life.”
As most Australians know, the stores are not only dedicated to helping less fortunate Australians with clothing, but it is also a strong advocate for recycling. Over the past five years the Salvation Army said it had reduced the amount of waste it was sending to landfill by 75 per cent, or about 4000 tonnes, through improved recycling. At least 12,000 mattresses had been saved from landfill and a volunteer men’s program in Queensland breaks down whitegoods and electrical appliances to enable steel and copper to be recycled. Any unsold products are also sent to underdeveloped countries to avoid any unnecessary waste.
The nomination alone is a wonderful achievement for the company, and we will be crossing our fingers for the winner announcement later this week.
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Nikki Williams
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Originally spotted on Inside Retailing
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