More than 1,400 hectares of land in Australia has been restored since the launch of Officeworks’ Restoring Australia initiative, which is celebrating its three-year anniversary this month. With the help of our customers and key suppliers, our goal is to plant two million trees across Australia by 2025.
Launched in 2017 in partnership with Greening Australia, the initiative is part of Officeworks’ long-term commitment to making a positive difference to the environment.
Thanks to customers, the initiative plants two trees for every one used, based on the weight of paper-based products they buy at Officeworks. To date, 639,795 trees have been planted in 16 sites across Australia.
The initiative supports Australian native wildlife, local landholders and communities where natural landscapes have been lost. Each of the planting sites across the country face their own unique challenges, and consultation from the Greening Australia team means individual solutions are designed to achieve the best environmental outcome for each. These can include the most suitable native species to plant in diverse sites such as the Riverina in NSW or the Eyre Peninsula in SA, or the type of habitat needed for native wildlife such as the Eastern Quolls and Bettongs in Tasmania or the Carnaby’s Cocktaoo in WA to thrive.
Officeworks Managing Director, Sarah Hunter, said: “Through Restoring Australia, we are not only supporting native wildlife, landholders and communities that benefit through the tree planting and land restoration projects, but we are also empowering our customers to make more sustainable purchases simply by shopping with us.
“As a business, we recognise the importance of tree planting and land restoration, including the role it can play to towards limiting the effects of climate change. We’re thankful for our partnership with Greening Australia who are helping us achieve this.’’
Greening Australia, the initiative’s partner, is an environmental organisation working to restore Australia’s unique landscapes and protect biodiversity with science-led solutions based on decades of expertise.
Greening Australia CEO Brendan Foran, said: “Greening Australia is working towards ambitious goals to tackle Australia’s greatest environmental challenges at scale. Partnerships based on a mutual commitment to community and landscape restoration are crucial in enabling us to do this, so we are proud to deliver the on-ground work for the Restoring Australia initiative and to celebrate this three-year milestone.”
About Officeworks:
Established 26 years ago in Richmond, Victoria, Officeworks is committed to making bigger things happen for its customers, team, the community and stakeholders. It operates 167 stores across Australia, a website that is home to more than 40,000 products, a national call centre, and a business team that helps micro, small and medium-sized businesses start, run and grow. Officeworks offers customers a wide range of office supplies, technology, furniture, art supplies, education resources and helpful services like print & copy and on-site and remote tech support through Geeks2U – delivering an experience that is easy and engaging, no matter how customers choose to shop. Officeworks is focused on the safety, wellbeing and career progression of the more than 8,000 team members it employs. It’s also dedicated to operating in a sustainable manner, including building and maintaining meaningful connections with the communities in which it operates, fundraising for its national partners and local community groups, continuing to reduce its impact on the environment and source responsibly.
About Greening Australia:
Greening Australia has been restoring and conserving Australia’s unique landscapes at scale through collaborative, science-based and innovative programs for over 38 years. Greening Australia is committed to tackling Australia’s greatest environmental challenges in ways that work for communities, economies and nature; planting millions of native trees and plants, protecting hundreds of native species, and supporting Traditional Owner’s aspirations for restoring country.
Key figures on the Restoring Australia initiative
- 639,795 trees planted since the launch of Restoring Australia
- Restoring more than 1,400 (1,439) hectares, the equivalent of more than 700 MCGs
- 91 landholders supported from sites Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, New South Wales and Victoria
- Improved the habitats for 16 endangered or threated species with a recent sighting of the very rare Australia painted snipe at the wetland restoration site at Mungalla Station in Queensland
- Trees planted by state
- Tasmania: 187,568
- Victoria: 125,795
- South Australia: 124,900
- New South Wales: 146,932
- Western Australia: 45,000
- Queensland: 9,600
