Community Report Card 2021
AOTEAROA/NEW ZEALAND
Grey Lynn
Grey Lynn
Our year in review It is a pleasure to share our 2021 Community Report Card, providing an overview of the great work that has been achieved working with local communities in Aotearoa/New Zealand over the past year.
Our team participated in and supported close to
5,000
community activities, helping to raise and contribute over
$1.7m
Whether it’s providing hands-on support for local projects, school visits, community garden projects, fundraising activities or our much-loved sausage sizzles, making a positive difference to local communities is central to everything we do. Across Aotearoa/New Zealand, our team participated in and supported close to 5,000 community activities, helping to raise and contribute over $1.7 million. Communities across Aotearoa/New Zealand continued to be tested over the past year, particularly given the ongoing impact of COVID-19. Our teams have worked hard to play our role in keeping communities safe, while finding the best ways to provide meaningful support, in line with evolving government guidelines. While at times COVID-19 saw fundraising activities and sausage sizzles paused, our team continued to provide innovative ways of connecting with local communities to support them in every way we could. This included donating gift cards to local community groups whose sausage sizzles had to be suspended due to local COVID-19 restrictions. During the year more than 200 community groups received a $500 gift card, representing an investment of over $100,000. Providing support when it’s needed most is incredibly important to our team, and we're grateful to all the community groups and not-for-profit organisations who worked with us during the year. We look forward to working together in the year ahead. Mike Schneider Managing Director Australia & New Zealand Ben Camire Director New Zealand
2
Nelson
Building community resilience Reaching out in times of need
A force to support
As always, our team have continued to be there to support communities when it’s needed most, including in times of extreme weather.
As a long-standing supporter of police charities and clubs, we were pleased to step up our support over the past year to acknowledge the additional efforts of the Police Force in challenging times. This included donating $30,000 to the New Zealand Police Association Police Families Charitable Trust.
In June 2021, when a tornado tore through parts of Auckland, our team donated vital products to assist impacted areas. In addition, after the floods in Gisborne, Westport, Tokomaru, Uawa and Tologa Bay our team provided product donations and hands-on support to ensure communities were able to clean up and recover from the devastation.
We’re proud to acknowledge the serving members of our Police Force and their families, so that they can continue to carry out their important and outstanding work in keeping our communities safe. This builds on our long history of supporting police charities and clubs every year, including collaboration on Crime Prevention Week. As part of Crime Prevention Week in November 2020, our team ran a Protect Your Property campaign with the aim of engaging communities to implement crime prevention initiatives, such as power tool engraving to prevent theft in local communities. Our stores engaged local police, who spent time in stores talking to customers about ways to protect property.
Nelson
Prepared communities are safe communities Bunnings helped raise awareness on emergency preparedness as part of the annual Get Ready Week, in conjunction with the National Emergency Management Agency Te Rākau Whakamarumaru. The aim of the program is to ensure the community can be prepared before, during and after emergencies like earthquakes, floods, tsunamis and volcanic activity. Bunnings stores also participated in ShakeOut, our national earthquake drill and tsunami hikoi, to remind the community of safe actions to be taken in the event of an earthquake.
North Shore
Fire and Emergency New Zealand's Check Your Smoke Alarm campaign was again supported by local fire brigades and stores, who worked together to share information on smoke alarm maintenance and fire safety in the home. Glenfield
Stronger together
Our team pitched in to support the Ngunguru Mahinga Kai by planting trees alongside a purpose-built raised garden bed, set with built in tool and water storage. The team in conjunction with the local marae, worked to establish a Māra rongoā to allow the local tamariki to learn about traditional medicine.
Working together with our communities We’re proud of our commitment to local communities and our ongoing connection with them. Our community support is a reflection of the communities where we live, work and raise our families. During the year we shared our learnings around Mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge) and Te Ao Māori (Māori worldview), and recognised and celebrated important events like Matariki as well as Samoan, Tongan, Cook Island and Māori Language Week. Our teams across Aotearoa/New Zealand have valued the opportunity to continue supporting local Māori and Pasifika led community organisations through activities such as in-store events, community projects and donations. Ngunguru Mahinga Kai
Keeping the language strong For the fourth year we were proud to support our team and customers to help revitalise te reo Māori and celebrate Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week) in September 2020. During the week we encouraged our team to use te reo Māori throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand and ran D.I.Y. workshops and craft activities aimed at strengthening Māori language and culture.
New Lynn 4
We also updated store signage to include Māori translation and ran television ads featuring our incredibly passionate team members, showing our commitment to ‘Kia kaha te reo Māori’ - ‘Let’s make the Māori language strong’. We are so grateful for our team members who are passionate about the everyday use of te reo, and we’ll continue to celebrate what te reo Māori represents to our teams and communities.
Takanini
Carving it up in Manukau Keen skaters loved the ‘pop-up’ skate event run by Young Guns Skate School at our Manukau store in March 2021. The school teaches kids the necessary skills required for skateboarding safely, with a focus on responsibility, respect and perseverance. The ‘pop-up’ was a great success, with the kids learning new skateboarding skills and developing their creative skills by designing their own skateboard deck with local graffiti artist Pascal Atiga-Bridger.
Manukau
For the love of art We were delighted to showcase the work of talented artists from our local community, transforming selected stores across Aotearoa/New Zealand into live art studios. Using Bunnings products, artists created beautiful pieces of art that were donated to community groups to help transform local spaces.
Our Westgate store welcomed artist, Anthony Dunn who uses the “whatu toi” as a narrative, to highlight the cause and effect upon creative languages
Experience that counts Our Takanini team enjoyed the opportunity to develop a work experience program for students at Manurewa High School. Students worked alongside our team and learned new skills. At the end of the program, the students were provided with a completion certificate along with credits from their work experience towards their education.
Graffiti and mural artist Jonny4higher, who has an artistic interest in the broader cultural spectrum of the Pacific, created a piece at our Westgate store Manurewa High School
Community connections Sparking our competitive spirit
Essentials for those in need Bunnings proudly supported I Got Your Back Pack in December 2020, a not-for-profit organisation that provides emergency care backpacks full of practical and essential items to survivors of domestic violence throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand. Through generous donations from team members and customers, care packs were filled, dropped off at Bunnings stores, and distributed to parents and children living in safehouses in the new year.
With COVID-19 limiting some of our traditional community support for the second year running, team members throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand continued to find creative new ways to support local community groups through an internal competition - Challenge Accepted. From getting musical to sharing mental health tips, challenges were issued to store teams with their responses to the various challenges posted on our internal social media platform. Winners were invited to nominate a local charity of their choice to receive a donation. Collectively more than 30 community groups received over $80,000 as part of the initiative over the last year. Challenge Accepted also helped our team stay connected, with plenty of camaraderie and inter-store competition fuelling a fantastic response.
Silverdale
Nourishing support Many of our team members worked with Nourished for Nil, to help sort and serve food items for community members around the Hawkes Bay area. Nourished for Nil is a non-profit organisation with a simple system of rescuing food from donors that would otherwise go to waste, and redistributing it to the local community. Our team members packaged up food parcels and distributed them to the local community, as well as lending a helping hand around the centre. Not only does Nourished for Nil provide a fantastic service for the community, they also help reduce food waste going to landfill.
Whakatane
Team members giving it their all When it comes to fundraising for the community, our team members love a challenge. To raise funds for people affected by cancer, many of our team members went alcohol-free for a month, raising over $12,000 for the Dry July Foundation. The funds raised provide invaluable services for cancer patients, their families and carers – whether it’s a lift to a life-saving appointment, guidance from a specialist nurse, connection to an informative voice, access to therapy programs or a bed close to treatment.
Nourished for Nil, Hastings 6
Our team were put to the fitness test in June 2021, with every team member challenged to do push ups to help raise funds for mental health and support the friends and whānau who have taken their life. Our team raised over $19,000 for the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.
From little things…. Across Aotearoa/New Zealand our team were involved in plenty of D.I.Y. projects to improve community spaces for children and young people. For the second year in a row, our stores offered the graduating class of local schools the choice of commemorating their time at the school with either a Buddy/Friendship Bench or native/fruit trees. Our team worked alongside students to plant the trees and build the benches. Buddy Benches are designed to encourage children in the playground to build friendships with any child sitting on the bench who may be feeling alone and invite them to play.
In the spirit of kaitiakitanga, and in our roles as kaitiaki o Papatūānuku, our team members also provided education to children about the importance of sustainability, through the Schools Sustainability Program which we continued to deliver across Aotearoa/New Zealand. The Program involves store teams actively supporting schools, Kura Kaupapa Māori, kindergartens and Kōhanga Reo to engage students in sustainability initiatives such as establishing veggie gardens, learning the journey from plant to plate, composting, worm farms and building animal refuge boxes. Of particular focus this year was helping our community with food resilience. We worked to build or maintain almost 200 raised timber or in-ground garden beds with schools, Kura Kaupapa Māori, community gardens, kindergartens, Kōhanga Reo and marae. Our team also worked with many schools to establish fruit forests and orchards for kids to enjoy for years to come. Store teams across Northland and Auckland came together to complete a sustainable community project for Northcote Kindergarten. The team’s efforts resulted in the kindergarten receiving three new sustainable vegetable gardens and orchard trees for their whole community to enjoy. In addition, the team lay gravel and paved paths, assembled a Buddy Bench and gardened, while providing the kindergarten with growing advice to ensure the garden can be enjoyed long into the future.
Carisbrook School, Dunedin
In Dunedin, our team worked with Carisbrook School to help students transform an old overgrown garden into a working veggie patch. The students embraced the challenge enthusiastically, sending Bunnings their design for the space - a round glasshouse to represent the sun, with garden beds projecting out like rays of sunshine. The design required a huge clean out of the existing space, including the relocation of an old hen house and compost heap. With great respect for the environment, the students pitched in to work alongside our team members. The students loved the chance to learn the craft of growing vegetables, with a sustainable garden they can continue to enjoy into the future.
Northcote Kindergarten, Auckland
Northcote Kindergarten, Auckland
Northcote Kindergarten, Auckland
Sustainability In October 2020, we pledged to source
100% renewable electricity by 2025
11%
reduction in carbon emissions for the financial year
Reducing emissions
Avoiding waste
We recognise that we have an important part to play in reducing carbon emissions and addressing climate change.
Reducing operational waste, minimising packaging and providing product recycling solutions for customers is key to our efforts to reduce waste and packaging.
Reducing energy consumption and transitioning towards more renewable energy across our network underpins our efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
During the year Bunnings continued to include the Australasian Recycling Label (ARL) on product packaging to help customers recycle, with over 500 products now displaying ARL information. We will continue to work with suppliers to implement the ARL to additional products in the coming years.
In October 2020, we announced plans to source 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2025, to help achieve our target of net zero Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030. To make our stores more energy efficient, LED lighting is a standard inclusion for all of our newly built stores and is being gradually retro fitted to existing stores. During the financial year, we reduced our carbon emissions by 11 per cent across our operations in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand, and we look forward to seeing what can be achieved in the coming year.
Australasian Recycling Label (ARL) 8
All creatures great and small Kororā Pōhatu/Little Penguins at Pōhatu Marine Reserve are Aotearoa/New Zealand’s largest mainland penguin colony, and are at risk of becoming extinct on mainland Aotaeroa/New Zealand within the next 30 years without drastic action by conservation authorities. Team members from Riccarton, Christchurch Airport and Shirley loved the chance to help build penguin nesting boxes to protect these birds in the region. Paw-sitive action Our team continued to show their support for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and their important work making a difference to animals in need, helping with hands-on working bees and product donations.
Kororā Pōhatu/Little Penguins, Riccarton
One project involved our Riccarton team reaching out to other Christchurch stores to mobilise a team to help SPCA Christchurch with their brand-new ‘Canine Quarantine’ facility. This included helping with gardening, planting new trees and general maintenance, as well as the donation of tools, mesh for fencing, plants, soil, equipment and even pools for the dogs to keep cool on hot days. Our animal-loving team embraced the chance to help make a difference to the centre, SPCA and their many furry friends. Responsible
timber sourcing
Kororā Pōhatu/Little Penguins, Riccarton
As a major retailer of timber and products containing wood, we recognise our role in supporting sustainable forestry practices through our responsible sourcing program. Bunnings’ responsible sourcing program focuses on identifying and mitigating potential social and environmental risks associated with sourcing timber. Our goal is to ensure all timber and wood products originate from legal and well managed forestry operations. To reduce the risks associated with uncertified natural forest timber procurement, we have a Responsible Timber Sourcing Policy in place which requires all natural forest timber products to be independently certified to Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC), Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) or other equivalent standard, with FSC preferred in highly contentious regions. During the year, we also reviewed and updated our due diligence process to monitor timber supplier performance in accordance with our Policy. To facilitate more accurate and regular monitoring, we also increased the frequency of timber supplier surveys to be completed by suppliers of timber, wood or fibre products. The survey captures the timber species, country of harvest, forest type, country of manufacture, applicable timber certification, and product claims for timber products, including component and composite products which have a percentage of timber inputs.
SPCA Christchurch
FSC Certified Outdoor Furniture
Thank you
If the last year proved anything it is that we continue to be stronger together. To the many community groups and not-for-profit organisations we worked with – thank you from the bottom of our hearts for everything you do to strengthen, nurture and grow our local communities.