Our Social Impact
At Wolff Coffee Roasters, from society, to the environment, we realise that all our actions have reactions. Through our Environmental Social Governance (ESG) Framework we commit to sustainable development in both the local and global environment that we operate in. We focus on four priorities – governance, environment, community, and wolffpack – this forms and guides the framework and how we minimise our environmental footprint and constructively contribute to communities.
GOVERNANCE
ENVIRONMENT
COMMUNITY
WOLFFPACK
GOVERNANCE
Being ethical means doing the right thing. This is the foundation of being a sustainable company. Like many companies, a set of policies, standards, and standard operating procedures are maintained to provide further guidance on the operating practices. Training (incidental and planned) and regular team meetings support and monitor the implementation of our requirements.
We align and enhance our current guidelines and management system to meet standards in areas such as operational risks (e.g. fire, life, safety and food safety); data privacy and cyber security; human rights (e.g. labour practices, harassment); crisis and business continuity (e.g. natural disaster, pandemic crisis).
Integrity and trust continue to be more important than ever in today’s business world, we must ensure we always conduct our business in an ethical and responsible manner. Transparency is the key to building trust and enabling all stakeholders to make conscious decisions. It is also an important driver for improved performance and creation of stronger impact across our value chain, and accelerate more sustainable practices. We aim to be a transparent and trustworthy company internally and externally.
We can’t operate responsibly without the inclusion of our supply chain. We appreciate our partnerships with suppliers for better efficiency, innovation and sustainability as described in our Environment chapters. We would also drive the best ESG risk management practices along our supply chain.
ENVIRONMENT
Protecting the environment has been the core value of Wolff Coffee Roasters and our team for years. We operate our business more energy efficiently and are more resource conscious as compared to 10 years ago because of the stronger environmental commitment in the entire supply chain.
However, we now experience more frequent extreme weather events in Queensland, which are the result of climate change as explained by many researchers. We, together with our partners and stakeholders, must take a step forward in order to keep the Earth inhabitable for our future generations.
We have worked hard over the past seven years to develop and implement numerous operational environmental changes to benefit our planet. This includes a strong recycling program of soft plastics, cardboard and implementing all soft plastics packaging in 2020. All our gas/electricity we have chosen to carbon offset. Furthermore, our green coffee from Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, Ethiopia and Nicaragua arrives to us carbon free. We believe that sustainability must be integrated into our business activity along the value chain across our brands - Wolff Coffee Roasters, Big Bad Wolff Cafe, Wolff College of Coffee. In the coming years, we will further enhance our policies, standards and guidance throughout our entire business life cycle from design, build, procurement, operation and disposal in order to achieve these environmental goals.
COMMUNITY
We take our community investment seriously. We operate locally and have built long-term relationships with our local neighbourhood, being the local roaster with a big heart. We may be a local roaster at heart but we also have a global outlook.
We formalised our global community program, starting back in 2016 by the issuance of Community Engagement called "Farmer in Residence" starting community projects with our farmers at origin. Since then we have hosted coffee farmers from Kenya, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, PNG, Brazil.
We also focus heavily in our local community program since 2016 working with numerous not for profit organizations, charities, groups and individuals. We also see how our teams contribute to local communities, not simply through our philanthropy work, but also in other ways including donations and visits, free or in-kind sponsorships and employee volunteering. Our partnerships have addressed various social problems which are significant to local society, including domestic violence, child development, youth education, feeding the homeless, carer's needs, women’s rights, children with disabilities, environment, and cancer research among others.
WOLFFPACK
We are committed to fostering an engaging and respectful work environment for our Wolffpack to unleash their full potential and inspire them to become true Wolff ambassadors. Our commitment is supported by the following systems that set out the guiding principles, review our performance, promote an open dialogue culture, and grow our talents and put them in the right direction to advance their careers.
We reinforce our company employer branding through engaging our colleagues contractually, experientially and emotionally through the entire employment life cycle. We want our team to be proud of working with us and we remain the employer of choice.
In the coming years, we will focus on the following three critical components:
ENHANCE A FAIR AND EQUAL WORKING ENVIRONMENT to attract and retain modern talents
CULTIVATE A LEARNING MINDSET amongst our team that enable them to stay relevant and confident
FOSTER A CARING, INCLUSIVE AND COLLABORATIVE WORKPLACE CULTURE where synergy comes from diversity of thoughts and mutual respect