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Beyond the Environment: Goodwill Is Socially Sustainable
The UN Global Compact defines social sustainability as a way of identifying and managing business impacts, both positive and negative, on people. The quality of a company’s relationships and engagement with its stakeholders is critical. Directly or indirectly, companies affect what happens to employees, workers in the value chain, customers and local communities, and it is important to manage impacts proactively.
This Earth Day, we think it’s important to share just how Goodwill of Greater Washington operates as a socially sustainable organization.
Goodwill practices environmental sustainability through:
- Extending the life cycle of donated textiles by reselling them in the retail aftermarket
- Operating Goodwill’s administrative offices and Goodwill Excel Center in LEED certified buildings
- Institutional recycling at all of our administrative and business operations, as well as at The Goodwill Excel Center Public Charter High School
- Participating in the Dell Reconnect program which recycles millions of pounds of electronic waste annually
- The use of green cleaning products and practices in our 11 contract operations
Goodwill practices economic sustainability through the fulfillment of our mission services. In 2019…
- Goodwill provided free job training and education opportunities to more than 3,100 people in our community
- 369 students graduated from the Goodwill Excel Center adult charter high school
- The average starting hourly wage of those placed into employment was almost $16.00
Goodwill practices cultural sustainability by…
- Supporting community green efforts by keeping over 47 million pounds of material out of area landfills (in 2019) through the collection and resale of donated goods
- Offering Excel Center classes, like Earth Science, that teach lessons on environmental sustainability
We encourage all of our associates and the community we serve to support these sustainability efforts both within and outside of Goodwill of Greater Washington.
For more information on social sustainability visit: https://unglobalcompact.org/what-is-gc/our-work/social
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