Enable wins Premier's Sustainability Award

Enable Social Enterprises has taken out the Premier’s Recognition Award at the Victorian Premier’s Sustainability Awards for its work employing disadvantaged people in a successful e-waste business. The company also won the Innovative Products or Services category.

Enable’s mission is to break unemployment cycles by helping disadvantaged jobseekers connect with their community and environment, and improve their prospects of participating in gainful employment via supportive work and learning programs.

Enable achieves its goals via Enable IT Recycling — an online shop, fulfilment and storage service. The business re-uses, repairs or recycles technology and provides vital work and learning opportunities for those in need. In 2018, Enable IT Recycling created 10 employment pathways while diverting 133,046 kg of e-waste from landfill.

Premier Daniel Andrews congratulated and thanked the finalists for their hard work helping to achieve a stronger, more sustainable Victoria in his message at the awards ceremony.

The Finnigan family farm in Warrnambool, Kia Ora, was selected by the Premier as the winner of the Premier’s Regional Recognition Award for their program E.S.P. or Ethical, Sustainable, Profitable Wool. The team had earlier won the Small and Medium Enterprises category award. In 2018 Kia Ora, as part of the Fox and Lillie Genneys Group, was accredited under the International Wool Textile Organisation’s Responsible Wool Standard.

The inaugural Environmental Volunteering category was won by the Electrifying Industry Volunteer Working Group for its report demonstrating how to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing.

For more information, visit www.sustainabilityawards.vic.gov.au.