No longer will clients of property managers accept any product or service irrespective of its credentials of origin.
Today, most leading companies are embedding circular economy principals in their procurement policies.
So, what is the circular economy? Essentially, it’s a model of production and consumption of existing materials, sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing and recycling them for as long as possible.
According to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, “it is designed to benefit businesses, society, and the environment. In contrast to the ‘take-make-waste’ linear model, a circular economy is regenerative by design and aims to gradually decouple growth from the consumption of finite resources.”
In essence, it is a framework to tackle global challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution.
The circular economy fits within the broader movement by governments and organisations around Environmental, Social, and (Corporate) Governance (ESG), and dovetails with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, as well as reducing carbon emissions.
So, what does that mean for property managers?
Clients want products that are environmentally friendly, sustainable, reusable, compostable, ethically sourced (eg modern day slavery), capable of sharing and auditing the supply chain.
And they want these products and services from suppliers that have diversity and inclusion programs for employees and, more increasingly, Reconciliation Action Plans.
Founder of Integrity Health & Safety and Indigenous intensive care paramedic, Liam Harte, has been involved in building a sustainable Indigenous-owned business sector as part of Closing the Gap by embedding Indigenous procurement into the supply chains of public and private sector organisations.
His company, Integrity Health & Safety, is a Supply Nation certified Indigenous-owned supplier of wellbeing and workplace health and safety products and services, such as defibrillators, first aid kits and training, onsite flu vaccinations, COVID supplies and Rapid Antigen Tests, environmentally friendly cleaning products, compostable kitchenware and packaging, and much more.
“Many of our clients have Reconciliation Action Plans and/or are members of Supply Nation in order to, inter alia, procure from certified Indigenous businesses,” Harte said.
“However, now we curate more of our offerings to meet the requirements of the circular economy because our clients are committed to elevating their procurement policies to encompass all of these non-negotiables – the minimum employees, customers, shareholders and the community expect from a company.”
Property managers that can offer their products and services paying real attention to the circular economy, ESG, UN Sustainable Development Goals, Modern Day Slavery, D&I programs, Reconciliation policies, and carbon reduction, will be speaking the language of their leading clients and, by so doing, gain a competitive advantage over their competitors.
“This is why”, Harte concluded, “we prepared this diagram on our Homepage as it ties together our offerings within a framework that our customers increasingly demand.”
Integrity Health & Safety, Level 2, 27 Cope St, Redfern, NSW 2016
