Innovation

In 2019, Will & Able’s parent company, Altus Enterprises, a not-for-profit organization providing disabled people with employment opportunities, sought to establish a for-profit enterprise to increase employment offerings. Constrained by the New Zealand government's minimum wage exemption program, which capped employment within disabled enterprises nationwide at 900, Will & Able was set up with the long-term goal of being entirely owned and operated by the disabled community.

Business Manager Craig Burston has been with the company since its establishment in March of 2019 and explained how the Will & Able vision was to “set up a charity but run it as a pure business”. Transitioning from Altus Enterprises' labour focus to Will & Able’s product focus increased the ability to reinvest earned profits into the business whilst also de-risking business activities through diversification. Additionally, Will & Able’s product focus enabled them to offer employees minimum wage, increasing the financial independence and freedoms of workers. Placing people at the centre of operations, production processes retained repetitive, manual tasks, which people with disabilities excel at. Will and Able has created a model which is scalable whilst heading in the opposite direction of conventional cleaning product companies whose mechanized production systems are designed to maximize productivity and financial returns.

In addition to advancing opportunities for Kiwis with disabilities, Will & Able is a national leader in the space of circular packaging, taking an innovative approach to achieve best practice environmental sustainability. As a built-in business priority, Burston describes environmental sustainability as a “common sense" expectation of its conscious customer base. Will and Able creates its cleaning products with a plant-based, non-toxic formula assembled in non-virgin packaging made from 100% repurposed plastic milk bottles.

With its sight set on envisioning true 360-degree recycling, Will & Able continued to innovate, collaborate, and experiment with cutting-edge creative solutions to close the recycling loop entirely. Initially, offering customers the opportunity to send their bottles back for $2 to be repurposed into other products. With a substantial 20% of customers participating in the giveback program, Will and Able partnered with Aon Insurance to set up free drop-off bins at its 70 stores nationwide, multiplying the rate of returns and customer buy-in. The success of the Aon partnership prompted the decision to clean and reuse the bottles 7-8 times rather than repurpose them into secondary products; a feat that has not been attempted by competing eco-cleaning brands.

A product which does the job whilst creating jobs!

Inspiration

Employment disparities between able-bodied and disabled populations in Aotearoa are staggering. 2021 labour statistics reveal that only 42.5 percent of disabled 15–64-year-olds are employed, compared with 78.9 percent of non-disabled people in the same age group (Stats NZ, 2021). What is more, is that people with disabilities in Aotearoa are three times less likely to have a job than those without (Stats NZ, 2021). At the heart of Will & Able's operations lies the mission to fight this disparity, guided by the core belief that every person deserves the right to work in a safe, non-discriminatory and fun environment (SDG 8). Well on its way to achieving its mission of creating 100 new jobs for Kiwis with disabilities, Will & Able currently employs ten people with intellectual disabilities and three full-time able staff.

Striving to create the best work environment possible to empower and support its people is a company goal that stretches beyond providing reliable employment. As Craig Burston explains:

“We are so much more than providing employment. We provide a community for our employees to belong to, a reason to get out of bed in the morning and a quality reference for future employment opportunities.”

The invaluable co-benefits associated with employment is a sentiment shared amongst Will & Able’s staff, as an employee shares in a video for the 2021 NZ Diversity Awards:

“Will&Able makes me feel better about my disability. It makes me feel useful, like there is something I can do. Working at Will&Able has given me heaps of friends. We help one another out, we talk and share lunch together. I feel part of a community. My life would be really boring and sad if I wasn't at Will&Able.”

Quote sourced from 2021 Diversity Awards NZ Impact Winner: Will & Able. [07/09/22] https://diversityworksnz.org.nz/case-studies/2021-diversity-awards-nz/impact-willable/

Unemployment statistics: https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/labour-market-statistics-disability-june-2021-quarter/

Overall impact

The overall impact of Will & Able cannot be summarised into a couple of sentences nor encapsulated under the banner of a single sustainable development goal. As innovators at the cutting edge of environmental and social sustainability, their impact most closely aligns with SDGs 8, 10, 12, 14 and 17.

SDG 8: Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.

Will & Able’s aim to employ 100 Kiwis with disabilities champions target 8.5, to achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value. Well on their way to achieving this goal Will & Able currently employs 10 disabled staff and 3 abled staff.

SDG 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries.

Will & Able’s inclusive business model exemplifies target 10.2 in practice, which is to, empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or another status. The impact Will & Able has made on the lives of the people its employees was recognised in the 2021 NZ Diversity Awards, where Will & Able took out the award for impact.

SDG 12: Responsible consumption and production.

Will & Able’s Purposeful People scheme and business-to-business social procurement model offers a best practice example of targets 12.5 and 12.7. Which are to substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse and promote public procurement practices that are sustainable and in accordance with national policies and priorities. Simultaneously preventing plastic waste from entering landfill and repurposing secondary waste into new products. Preventing pollution in the short term whilst challenging the dominance of the linear take-use-waste economy in the long term.

SDG 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.

Will & Able's non-toxic product and 360 recycling scheme prevent further chemicals and plastic from entering our oceans, which relates to goal 14.1 to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, particularly from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution. So far, Will & Able has diverted over 3500 1L milk bottles from landfill, which is the equivalent of 100kg of plastic!

SDG 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development.

Will&Able’s central involvement in weaving Aotearoa’s disability enterprise network closer together and partnerships with NZ’s largest companies promoting sustainability champions target 17.16 to encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships.

Business benefit

Transitioning from a labour-based business to a product business had the dual advantages of increasing control and significantly reducing risk by not relying on Government subsidies. To diversify engagement, Will & Able sells its products through three different channels, online, in-store and a business-to-business franchise service. Diversification was crucial to de-risking and growing the business, a successful strategy as reflected in Will and Able’s forecasted growth of $700,000, increasing from $1.3 million in the 2022 Financial Year to $2 million in the 2023 Financial Year.

The business-to-business franchise model was particularly effective at scaling up business activities, increasing stability and creating new opportunities for job creation. A great example of this model in action is Will & Able's partnership with Auckland Council, Auckland Transport and Auckland Unlimited, as their main cleaning products provider. In addition to selling more products, the model creates more opportunities for employees to manage business-to-business contracts. Speaking at an event celebrating the partnership, business manager Craig Burston comments, “we want to show other businesses that this is how you can do sustainable procurement – creating jobs for people with disabilities, diverting recycled waste from being sent overseas, carbon reduction from a very local circular economy and the reduced environmental impact of using sustainable products – the list goes on. For us it’s no longer just about the price, it’s also about social return.”

Social and environmental benefit

Between 1 January 2018 and 31 March 2021, it was reported that New Zealand exported over 98,000 tonnes of plastic waste offshore, with half of it being shipped to Malaysia and Thailand (Greenpeace, 2018). From here, much of the waste is illegally burned and dumped, with tremendously harmful effects on local communities and natural ecosystems. Far from its clean green image New Zealand is a perpetrator of the global plastic crisis. Committed to doing right by people and the planet Will & Able sought to mitigate harms caused by decades of linear consumption, leading responsible consumption and production business practices across Aotearoa (SDG12). A goal held from the beginning, with packaging made from recycled plastic milk bottles, an innovation seldom attempted by competing brands. Seeking to localize its 360 recycling ambitions, Will & Able established a nationwide recycling program called ‘Purposeful People’ in collaboration with disability support organizations located across the country in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. Where people with disabilities are tasked with cleaning and refilling the bottles to be used again, keeping plastic out of landfills both here and overseas.

This circularity mission snowballed into a national circularity campaign piquing the interest of Aotearoa’s largest companies, Fonterra, Z Energy, PwC and Westpac. Recently announcing a partnership with Z Energy and Anchor to pilot customised recycling bins at nine Z stations for people to drop off their empty W&A bottles and repurpose Z energy milk bottles to feed directly into the local circular economy. If successful, this will be rolled out to 200 sites nationwide. Creating more employment opportunities for people with disabilities as empty bottles are sent to a network of disability organizations around the country to be washed, then returned to Will&Able to be refilled. What’s more is that the bulk order cardboard boxes are recycled back into packing material, proving Will & Able’s genuine commitment to circularity is more than just lip service.

Source: Greenpeace, 2018. https://www.greenpeace.org/aotearoa/press-release/new-zealand-exporting-plastic-waste-to-developing-nations-at-an-alarming-rate/

Interview

Craig Burston, General Manager