Westpac MobileMuster

Who and Why

Westpac is one of Australia’s largest banks and corporate employers.

As a large, reputable international organisation, the Westpac Bank aspires to become a leader in the banking industry and equally, a leader in corporate citizenship.

Upon hearing about the MobileMuster in 2006, a Westpac employee saw it as the perfect vehicle to get employees involved in a recycling initiative.

Susan Clark, Westpac Senior Manager, Sustainable Supply Chain says Westpac is committed to running an environmentally sustainable business and the MobileMuster was an excellent way to demonstrate the company's sustainable procurement policy to its employees.

The Process

Susan Clark began the process of Westpac taking part in MobileMuster by approaching suppliers to see if they could suggest a way of getting employees involved in a recycling initiative. Telstra told Susan about their involvement with MobileMuster, and she was impressed that the entire mobile phone industry in Australia voluntarily funded a take-back and recycling program for the products they produced.

Seeing the huge potential for staff involvement and general goodwill, Susan decided to take a project management approach, running the MobileMuster over 18 corporate sites reaching over 12,000 Westpac employees. The month of August 2006 was set as the date to conduct the muster.

Due to the massive scale of the program, Susan formed a committee of representatives from all departments including internal communications, community involvement, corporate responsibility, building management, Telstra and the Australian Telecommunications Mobile Association (AMTA).

Susan then invited employees to become 'Wranglers', people who would volunteer to help raise awareness of the campaign, support the logistic requirements and be a key contact in the business to answer questions about the campaign.

"I knew getting the right people from the beginning was fundamental to the success of the muster," said Susan.

Once employees confirmed their interest in becoming members of the committee or wranglers, Susan began an extensive communications plan, which included; a dedicated MobileMuster site within the Westpac Community Involvement intranet page, collection points at each of the locations - complete with MobileMuster canisters, posters, flags, brochures, merchandise; frequent emails to committee members which were disseminated to all staff; and a media release sent to print and broadcast media announcing the company’s participation, which generated local coverage.

To encourage employees to bring in their old phones Susan in conjunction with Telstra, added an incentive element to boost collections. Every person who turned in a mobile phone, battery or accessory, went into a draw to win one of two Nokia N70 mobile phones valued at $679.Competition details and entry forms were also added to the Westpac Community Involvement intranet page.
 

Muster Results

The Westpac Muster was a phenomenal success, collecting 1,300 phones as well as batteries and accessories during the month of August 2006. From the phones collected, resources recovered from the materials included 1 kg aluminium, 30kg steel, 4 kg copper, 2 kg manganese, 1 kg nickel, 1 kg cadmium (a heavy metal that should never end up in landfill), 3 kg plastics and 1.5kg of brass. The precious metals ‘mined’ from Westpac’s collections were the equivalent to what is extracted from 1.2 tonnes of gold, silver and copper-sulphide bearing ore. Susan attributes the success of the campaign to the MobileMuster committee and wranglers, whose generous support and time were key to staff participation.

"On launch day, the Westpac Wranglers, along with volunteers from Telstra handed out information and asked people to bring in their old mobile phones. They were also responsible for the tubes and crates on site."

In addition, Susan says support from the Westpac shareholders and corporate team was pivotal, as it gave her the powers to create an enterprise-wide recycling campaign, which had not been done before in the company."

As a leader in corporate responsibility, Westpac have offered to make the communication and planning tools they developed available. These can be used to support other Australian businesses to help run their own successful muster and can be downloaded by clicking on the page links on the left hand side of this page.

Rose Read, Manager of Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association national recycling program, MobileMuster, says the goal of the MobileMuster is to raise business and community participation and lift recycling levels to one million mobile phones and batteries a year by 2008.

“We congratulate Westpac for taking the lead and helping us achieve this goal, but we also need the support of the wider community and more major businesses across Australia,” said Ms Read.