Innovation

Each OXXO store has equipment like computers, refrigerators and microwaves that after a period of time, becomes depreciated and eventually becomes waste. Seeing this, OXXO creates the “Program for Sustainability Dismantling of Equipment and Furnishing” that consists of a process of selection among the variety of items in their hands to either repurpose or appropriately recycle them and therefore avoid creating waste.

This program achieves replacing the use of “Chatarreros” or “Waste handlers” which only gather waste but not appropriately dispose or recycle it, instead OXXO carefully developed a 6 step process to ensure all of their items get a second chance at life.

First step; all the equipment to be replaced gets gathered from the stores (refrigerators, microwaves, computers, etc). Second step; OXXO depreciates their assets from their finance reports to ensure a transparent process. Third step; contact is made with OXXO’s Maintenance team in order to select the articles that can get reused in any other area of the business or to use as parts in order to fix any current assets, therefore directly giving a second purpose to their life without any further processes. Fourth step; a thorough process of partner selection is made to assign the right company to recycle the remaining elements that didn’t get a repurpose inside OXXO. Fifth step; after the recycling partner has been picked, OXXO’s logistics team ships all the remaining components to the final recycling process to be reborn. Sixth step; finalized the recycling process, the selected partner issues an ecological certificate that is delivered to OXXO to ensure the process has been made to the correct standards according to the material being treated. With this process, OXXO helps the planet by giving what would initially be considered as waste, a second chance at life.

Inspiration

OXXO´s inspiration is based in its ambition to continue in the growth path and continues people's development. OXXO´s main goal is to have the growth of their people holding the values that Don Eugenio Garza Sada preached during his lifetime through his own example: respect, honest, commitment, coherence, will, bravery, empathy, solidarity and participation. As part of these values, OXXO declared the central values based in their daily work and ambitious con continues growing. The values are as follows:

• Integrity

• Respect

• Team work

• Modesty

• Moderation

The employees culture has been developed by strengthening and widening the culture of sustainability working as an organization through their Sustainability Work System. In terms of environmental stewardship, OXXO grouped their efforts into three areas of action: energy efficiency, comprehensive waste management, and reduction in water consumption.

Overall impact

OXXO´s effort to preserve a healthy environment by creating of the Program for Sustainability Dismantling Equipment and Furnishing will have a direct impact over the environment. The donation, reuse or recycling of computers, refrigerators and other electronic devices can be considered a great way to help conserve natural resource and avoid electronic pollution. The dismantling and disposing of electronic devices creates a liquid and atmospheric release which ends in bodies of water, soil and air with effects in land, sea, and animals.

Hiring specialized companies that comply with the applicable authorization and regulations to dismantle equipment and furnishing those ones that have reached the end of their useful life. In this way, reusable materials are recycled and the rest of the waste is adequately disposed of.

In 2015, OXXO recycled more than 890 tons of waste through the responsible disposal of more that 40,057 pieces of equipment and furnishing, an increase of 66% compared to the prior year, thus avoiding disposing in landfills and generating additional environmental benefits from the use of the materials, including 4.800 MW and 37 million liters of water saved.

According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) recycling 1 million laptops could help to save energy equivalent to the energy used in 3,500 US homes. Another interesting detail of this report, indicates that for every million cell phones that is recycled, is possible to recover metals and precious metals such as copper, silver, gold and palladium.

Business benefit

Due the number of stores open in Mexico and Colombia (approximate 15,000), the impact of OXXO, environmentally, operationally and financially speaking, is huge. For an example, if 1 page (of paper) of garbage is produced per store, per day; in one day, OXXO will produce more than 15,000 pages of garbage per day.

With that in mind, there is a risk of an environmental problem with the garbage produced by the operations of this retail chain. By the government law of Mexico (“Ley general del equilibrio ecológico y la protección al ambiente” and “Ley general para la prevención y gestión integral de los residuos “) there are special procedures for the electronic waste disposal, that if they are not followed, fines would be applied accordingly.

According to the Sustainability Manager of OXXO (the interviewee), “OXXO made projections to estimate the cost of possible fines. In case one of OXXO´s stores gets a fine, they will have to pay 3,000 MXN pesos per day times 15,000 stores; this will mean a loss of 45,000,000 MXN pesos per day”.

Also, it is important to mention that for every 10 computers turned in to their Recycling partners, OXXO will have a return between $10,000-$12,000 MXN. This aids into the attractiveness of the program joined by all the evident Societal & Environmental benefits.

Social and environmental benefit

OXXO cares about the environment and because of their huge operation they like to think beyond their sales. Each of the stores has equipment like computers, refrigerators and microwaves that after a period of time becomes waste; to be able to deal with that, OXXO looked for a new way to define a new depreciation process and look for new commercial partners that helps to recycle the equipment’s that would have just become waste and eventually be disposed in our environment.

Since OXXO found that in Mexico there “chatarreros” only picked the waste but not actually recycled the pieces. Due to this, OXXO started to look at recycling companies that could help OXXO in this effort. By this process, OXXO makes sure that the waste receives a second life in current equipment by sending them to companies that will process them in the correct way and makes sure that items get reused and waste in our planet reduced.

Interview

Paula López, Sustainability Manager

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