Sims includes gender diversity in sustainability plan

Global recycling company Sims Ltd., in a June blog post, says it is striving to raise the number of women it employs from the current 21 percent of its workforce to 25 percent.

In the posted essay, titled “Three ways Sims Ltd. is committed to sustainability,” the company cites its secure electronics recycling and auto shredder residue (ASR) treatment efforts as two of those ways and adds “closing the gender gap” as the third.

“A diverse team improves the quality of decision making,” the company writes in part, adding, “diversity in the workplace can increase customer insight and innovation in an increasingly global world.”

Sims says it has as a goal to have women representing 25 percent of its workforce around the world. “Thus far, our actions have resulted in an increase in the company’s female representation from 19.5 percent to 21 percent when compared to the year prior,” writes the company. “The hard work must continue, and Sims is committed to ensuring hiring is fair, employees feel welcomed, and remuneration is equal.

Adds the company in its blog post, “Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 21 percent more likely to enjoy better than average profitability, and those in the top quartile for ethnic diversity are 33 percent more likely to enjoy it,” citing a consultancy for those figures.

Sims Limited also points to its Australia-based ASR-to-syngas project to a sustainability goal “to transform more than 1 million tons of ASR, the material that is left over after metal recycling, each year into new useful products by 2030.”

The third sustainability method mentioned by Sims involves how its Sims Lifecycle Services (SLS) business unit is “helping major brand owners and digital data storage providers to recycle the cloud by securely managing hardware in their data centers. Once the data center material is decommissioned, SLS works with clients to provide guidance on how best to process equipment. In many cases, servers can be dismantled to recover components that can be used again, [helping] clients advance their zero-waste targets and greenhouse gas emissions reductions while saving costs.”

Sims Ltd. says of its overall operations, “We are in an advantageous position because our business model keeps resources in use for as long as possible, as well as continues to make resources available for future use – the very basis and definition of the circular economy.”