Thomas Seuberlich wants to “move the world.”
That may sound like a lofty ambition, but all he really needs to accomplish his goal are corporate cast-offs. A lot of them.
Mr. Seuberlich is director of Waste To Wonder, a Mississauga, Ont.-based business that takes redundant office equipment that is normally sent to landfill and redistributes it to charitable organizations locally and internationally.
Unwanted chairs, desks, white boards, filing cabinets and computers might become the genesis of a new school in Morocco or a rehab centre in Liberia. In exchange, companies get an environmentally friendly and socially conscious way to dispose of their corporate waste.
“I worked in the office furniture industry for many years in Toronto and Vancouver, bringing furniture into offices rather than taking it out,” Mr. Seuberlich, 58, says. “So it’s kind of a cyclical and balanced thing for me. I've rounded the world a few times and seen people in charities with a lot of passion doing great work, and to support them with this venture is what drives me.”
Waste To Wonder launched in Britain in 2002, and the Mississauga location became the company’s first franchise in North America when it opened in January. The company employs what it terms the “environmental management process.” When a company needs to dispose of office waste due to company relocations, internal moves, rebranding or mergers and acquisitions, it can contract Waste To Wonder to get that waste into the hands of charities instead of littering landfills.
While Waste To Wonder doesn’t do any of the physical work, it plans and oversees the entire operation: It identifies which items can be redistributed before the physical move, and then a process manager works with movers and monitors the entire removal process. It directs items into either the redistribution, recycling or landfill stream, and provides a contract for transfer of title, which releases the client from any liability.
Items earmarked for redistribution are then either given to local charities or shipped overseas to a waiting charitable organization as part of the "Big Bright Future" program.
“We fill a 10- by 40-foot container with enough items to put together a school or medical clinic in Africa, Asia, Central or South America,” Mr. Seuberlich says. Currently, his team is filling 10 40-foot containers with office equipment and furniture as part of an initiative by non-profit group World ORT to create training facilities for the people of Haiti.
Waste To Wonder also produces reports, case studies and press releases, which the client can then share with employees, their shareholders or the public. The idea is that companies not only get to dispose of office waste in an environmentally friendly way, but they are able to enhance their public image as good corporate citizens. According to Mr. Seuberlich, the cost of contracting Waste To Wonder is comparable to what it would cost to dispose of office waste in landfills. But companies get the added bonus of good PR.
“It’s like the example of the Unicef card – even if it costs 10 cents more, you are encouraged to buy it because of the goodwill that comes with it,” Mr. Seuberlich says. “It’s the same here. Our service is either cost-neutral, or it’s marginally more, and very small compared to the benefit the company gets in publicity about it.”
In Britain, Waste To Wonder has completed more than 200 international projects, with a client list including IBM, American Express and LexisNexis. But getting a foothold in a new market can be difficult. For example, Mississauga’s Waste To Wonder has been trying to work with area hospitals to obtain their waste to outfit medical clinics in war-torn countries, but have so far been unsuccessful.
