Appliances Online

Our Sustainability Framework

• Emissions & Key Environmental Issues

  What is your company doing to reduce your emissions or combat key environmental issues (e.g. waste (packaging, end of life product strategy or recycling), biodiversity, land use, water, chemical use, energy use, and natural resource use etc.)?

  Keeping communities clean - We help customers recycle their old appliances, mattresses, and product packaging. This prevents harmful substances from leaking into the environment, keeping communities and ecosystems clean. Tackling Australia’s fastest growing waste category - Our free removal and recycling program started in 2005 and has over the years helped recycle more than 80,000 tonnes of appliances and e-waste—one of the fastest growing waste categories in Australia. When our delivery teams deliver new appliances to our customers, we also pick up their old products and bring them back to our distribution centres to be sorted and processed. We then deliver the scrap to Australia’s leading metal recyclers to ensure items are safely and responsibly recycled. Diverting end-of-life mattresses from landfill - Since 2020, we have partnered with Soft Landing to turn old mattresses into roof sheeting, carpet underlay, and more. We are members of the Australian Bedding Stewardship Council and participants in the “Recycle My Mattress” program. Since the start of the program, we have collected and funded the recycling of over 4,282 mattresses, whilst creating more than 50 jobs for people experiencing hurdles to employment.

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• Service Offering

  How are the service/s you offer environmentally friendly?

  Diverting packaging waste from landfill - With the delivery of new products, comes packaging waste. That’s why Appliances Online has implemented a program to collect and recycle packaging materials ensuring it doesn't end up in landfill. Our Winning Services drivers unbox items at the delivery site, then collect and pre-sort packaging waste to bring back to our distribution centres (DCs). This program is free for our customers and captures not only cardboard and soft plastics but also expanded polystyrene (EPS), which currently has no kerbside recycling solution for the general public. At our DCs, we have dedicated packaging sorting areas and teams who sort the waste into four main streams: soft plastic, EPS, cardboard, and residual general waste. Cardboard and soft plastic are compressed and bailed, the EPS is either melted or compressed onsite. After processing, we work with licensed recycling facilities to ensure the material gets turned into new products. For example, the EPS is sent to China, where it is used as a raw material for the production of new items such as picture frames and skirting boards. Over the timeframe of 2021 - 2022 we have helped our customers divert 3,039 tonnes of packaging waste from landfill.

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• Supply Chain

  Do you partner with ethical factories that meet international labor standards? What processes have you implemented to make your supply chain more sustainable?

  Whether it’s shopping with us, working in our operations, or being a supplier to our business, we want our stakeholders to know that we are actively working to understand and mitigate any negative social impacts. We are fully committed and hope this to be a path of collaboration and shared responsibility, as we work towards traceability and transparency in the supply chain. Taking a risk-based approach, Appliances Online is engaging with our suppliers to understand what practices and processes they have in place to manage and mitigate the risks of modern slavery within their organisations and supply chains. A key part of our approach to responsible sourcing at Appliances Online is to educate suppliers and provide practical advice to further understand the risks of modern slavery in their supply chain, whilst improving transparency and due diligence measures. To find out more about our comprehensive responsible sourcing approach, please review our latest Winning Group Modern Slavery Statement and our Supplier Code of Conduct.

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• Community Initiatives

  How does your company give back to the community (e.g. financial donations, volunteering, partnerships etc.)?

  We give back to build happy and resilient communities and contribute to improving homelessness, health, youth, reconciliation and the environment, by donating to and engaging with various organisations including Good360, Dignity, Lou’s Place, and Mary’s House. We also proudly support the Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience and their annual Hoodie Day. We have been supporting Dignity since 2016 and this year, Appliances Online under the Winning Group has committed to a gold partnership with Dignity (valued at $50,000) to support their mission to prevent and end homelessness. We provide appliances to Dignity’s temporary accommodation homes, from washing machines and dryers to fridges and freezers and TV’s. The partnership supports Dignity to replace or upgrade any appliances across their multiple properties and to expand when opening new Dignity homes. Our teams are also encouraged to volunteer and have helped to set up a Dignity home.

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• Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

  How has your company made a commitment to achieve and maintain inclusion & diversity (e.g. Gender / Race / Ethnicity / National Origin / Sexual Orientation / Religion / Disability / Age)?

  We are committed to creating an equal, inclusive and diverse work environment. We are an equal opportunity workplace and have optimised our job adverts to attract a diverse range of candidates. Our Experience & Talent Acquisition Team delivers regular training, such as unconscious bias training, to hiring managers, ensuring they are equipped to apply an inclusive mindset to candidates and team members. We have also partnered with disability employment services for roles across the business and run return to work programs with a specific focus on supporting women to return to the workforce. Appliances Online, under the Winning Group, has released its inaugural Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), which outlines our commitment to contribute to Australia’s reconciliation with First Nations peoples. We are proud to commence our journey to further understand our nation’s history, story and true heritage. We will use our first RAP to focus on the education of our team members and customers on the significance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, traditions and stories in a respectful manner and to create opportunities to work with First Nations peoples across our organisation, customers, brand partnerships and beyond.

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• Circular Models

  How does your circular model or circular initiative work?

  E-waste is Australia’s fastest growing waste category and, unfortunately, almost half of it still goes to landfill. Our circular approach started in 2005 with the launch of Appliances Online where our CEO and Founder John Winning wanted to extend a truly legendary customer service proposition by offering the collection and recycling of appliances. Appliances Online is the first, and to this day the only, e-commerce retailer in Australia to offer this service free of charge. Convenience (or lack thereof) is a huge barrier for consumers to participate in the circular economy. We take that barrier away by collecting old and broken appliances from our customers when we deliver the new one, so this take-back program even applies to products that have not been not sold by us. Our drivers will load the appliance, return it back to our DCs and we then work with metal recyclers to have the appliances recycled so that the precious materials can be extracted and re-used. Steel especially is a valuable resource; recycling one tonne of steel saves 1,100 kg of iron ore, 630kg of coal, and 55kg of limestone.

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• Materials