Analytical Management Assignment
Plastic Collective is an organization that works on 3 fundamental pillars including people empowerment with knowledge, innovation of new designs and materials and creation of practical and reliable tools and machinery, such as the Shruder machine.
The Shruder program (machinery & training) is effective for the community to produce the valuable recycled plastic in form of shredded raw material, filament/ cord and moulded products. Even, Plastic Collective also provides a plastic neutral certification for the businesses so they could adopt this program for the purpose of reducing their plastic footprint (Plastic Collective, 2019).
It has importance in Australian and global landscape because it provides the solutions to empower the community to transform the plastic waste. The major contribution of this organization is to reduce the plastic footprint by enabling the individuals as well as the organizations to transform the plastic waste into the useful products.
The mission of Plastic Collective is to prevent plastic leaking into the environment and convert these plastics into valuable resources with income generation for communities (Journey Australia Staff, 2019).
Sustainability related strategies & issues
Plastic waste is becoming a big sustainability issue worldwide due to lacking safe waste management. Approx 11 million tonnes of plastic is introduced in the environmental and seas yearly. For this, it is important to adopt better practices that could be effective to collect the plastic is and recycle them to reduce the environmental pollution.
It is major concerns for the people as well as the businesses to handle the sustainability issues due to the increasing global warming issues and climatic changes across the world (Vince and Hardesty, 2017). It has been mandatory for the communities and businesses to focus on the waste reduction to maintain the sustainability and overcome the related issues.
The increasing concerns towards the environmental protection because of climatic changes have raised the need for the people to reduce the plastic waste because it causes high pollution for the environment and the marine bios.
Sustainability practices of Plastic Collective
It is required to develop plans that guide the individuals to achieve the certain goals and objectives. The planning plays an important role in achieving the goals through proper utilization of available resources and time.
In concern of this management function, Plastic Collective does proper planning to design the programs and activities that are helpful to empower the communities to transform the plastics into valuable resources. In relation to this, Plastic Collective has designed the Shruder program by developing the precious plastic modular machines in 2016 (Shah, 2017).
The firm integrates two machines including a shredder and extruder into one portable unit that is transportable. The key goal of Plastic Collective is to deliver the Shruder program to the 4000 remote and isolated communities where no facility is available for the waste collection and transforming it.
To achieve this goal, the firm has planned properly by making partnership with big brand like Coca-Cola, Southern Cross University, Project aware, etc. This works closely with the firms, organizations and communities who are oriented to support the economic and environmental aspects to make the world healthier and cleaner (Haward, 2018).
Its planning is based on 3-stage comprehensive partnership package that is used to fund the Plastic Collective efforts to deliver those machines and offset the plastic waste. It also plans for creating jobs in remote areas by designing the strategies that help to stop the plastic waste.
Organising is related to the framework for assigning and handling the functions efficiently. It is related to the delegation to assign jobs of routine nature to the employees.
For the organising the activities and programs, Plastic Collective organises a team by appointing educators, engineers and creative persons (Syberg et al., 2018). These teams are very competent and skilled which work together with the partnership of other organizations and communities to reduce plastics in the environment.
Under this approach, the firm determines what work is needed and the person to whom these tasks are assigned and arrange them to make decisions. In 2016, the firm stated to develop and create the machines and educational training package for remote communities that helped to reduce the plastic waste and make a global change significantly.
Louise Hardman is CEO/Founder, while Mark Wolf joined the team in July, 2017 as CTO having expertise more than 40 years in the environmental monitoring, applied hydrology and hydraulics. Such valuable experience in this field enabled the firm to organize the activities properly to achieve the desired goals (Liebler, and McConnell, 2016).
In addition, Steve Hardman is a serial entrepreneur, who has projected several technology businesses in software sectors, automotive and motor racing. He was accountable for introducing new technologies in the existing machines that help to make the waste reduction process more effective and efficient.
Leading the staff is crucial to provide them instructions and guidelines to achieve the set goals and objectives. It is necessary for an organization to lead the people in proper direction to meet the organizational expectations (Slack and Brandon-Jones, 2018).
Plastic Collective leads the communities and partners to develop better strategies and approaches to promote the environment that could facilitate the use of machines and reduce the plastics waste content in the environment.
It motivates it staff to contribute to the socio-economic development of the country and encourages them to reduce the plastic waste in remote areas. In addition, the social cause of the organization also encourages the employees to contribute to the environmental safety programs.
It also develops partnerships with different firms and frames the effective groups having the same purpose of reducing the plastic wastes in the environment and seas. Under the leading aspects, there is online platform that allows the people to share their ideas and information to make a better decision.
Control is significant to measure the effectiveness of the existing processes and compare with the set standards to adopt the measures which could be effective to reduce the variations (Worth, 2018).
In concern of this, Plastic Collective uses the quality control measures that are effective to develop the quality machines which are useful to transform the plastics wastes in valuable resources. It uses the industry standards to ensure the maintenance, reliability, durability and long life. With the help of these quality control measures, it enables to develop quality machines for the communities to control plastics pollution (Foulsham, 2017).
The performance and safety are the major aspects in quality engineering that ensures the production of the quality machines. Apart from this, it conducts surveys in the remote areas where the facilities are not available for the collection of plastic wastes. The use of the insights obtained from the local people enables it to take effective measures that are significant to produce the needed outcomes.
Even training programs conducted by the firm is also effective control measure that is used by Plastic Collective to develop knowledge and understanding of the communities as well as partners to sue the Shruder achiness to transform the wastes into the valuable resources (So et al., 2016).
It conducts 4 day training program that is based on empowerment with knowledge, innovation with ideas and creation with tools and machineries. Through this, the groups are trained effectively for the use of the machine and identifying the new micro-business opportunities in recovery of the plastic resources.
Conclusion and recommendations
Based on the above discussion, it can be concluded that Plastic Collective uses the management functions properly to achieve its mission and goals of the business. the management functions including the planning, organizing, leading and control are effectively considered by Plastic Collective to deliver Shruder machines to the communities and businesses and enable them to transform the plastics into valuable items.
In relation to this, it can be suggested to Plastic Collectives to focus on new technologies like magnetic fields that can be helpful to convert waste in recycled materials and achieve its objective successfully. The use of the new technologies will enable the firm to make changes in existing processes and activities to improve the efficiency for waste reduction.
On the other hand, app development can play important role for the firm to encourage people about the reduction of their plastic footprint and ways to handle this problem. Through this, it can also aware people about its machines their use to reduce the plastic pollution.
Apart from this, the use of social media in running campaigns and programs can be effective to involve more people across the globe. This media can spread its message to the people to encourage them for waste reduction.
Foulsham, A. 2017. What goes around comes around – plastic possibilities. [Online] Available at: http://csr-asia.com/newsletter-what-goes-around-comes-around-plastic-possibilities [Accessed: 31 May 2019]
Haward, M., 2018. Plastic pollution of the world’s seas and oceans as a contemporary challenge in ocean governance. Nature communications, 9(1), p.667.
Journey Australia Staff 2019. How Plastic Collective and Coca-Cola are Collaborating in the Circular Economy. [Online] Available at: https://www.coca-colajourney.com.au/stories/how-plastic-collective-and-coca-cola-are-collaborating-in-the-circular-economy[Accessed: 31 May 2019]
Liebler, G. and McConnell, C.R., 2016. Management principles for health professionals. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Plastic Collective 2019. THE SHRUDER & PROGRAM. [Online] Available at: https://www.plasticcollective.co/brochure [Accessed: 31 May 2019]
Shah, V. 2017. What’s a Shruder and will it help end plastic pollution? [Online] Available at: https://www.eco-business.com/news/whats-a-shruder-and-will-it-help-end-plastic-pollution/ [Accessed: 31 May 2019]
Slack, N. and Brandon-Jones, A., 2018. Operations and process management: principles and practice for strategic impact. Pearson UK.
So, W.M.W., Cheng, N.Y.I., Chow, C.F. and Zhan, Y., 2016. Learning about the types of plastic wastes: Effectiveness of inquiry learning strategies. Education 3-13, 44(3), pp.311-324.
Syberg, K., Hansen, S.F., Christensen, T.B. and Khan, F.R., 2018. Risk perception of plastic pollution: Importance of stakeholder involvement and citizen science. In Freshwater Microplastics (pp. 203-221). Springer, Cham.
Vince, J. and Hardesty, B.D., 2017. Plastic pollution challenges in marine and coastal environments: from local to global governance. Restoration Ecology, 25(1), pp.123-128.
Worth, M.J., 2018. Nonprofit management: Principles and practice. Sage Publications.
