Written for Call2Recycle web/newsletter, February 2014.
With 90 per cent of
customers happy with our level of service, and 96 per cent likely to recommend
us to others, you might wonder whether some kind of magic is at work behind the
scenes at Call2Recycle. Contrary to
suspicions though, we do not import fresh pixie dust from Walt Disney each week
in order to ensure our collection sites are always ready to receive batteries.
That said, one of the most
common enquiries still received regularly by our customer service team is, “How
do I order a replacement box now that I’ve sent my full one back?” For the vast majority of collection sites,
the answer is always the same: you don’t have to. Alas, the reason why you don’t have to order
a replacement box isn’t quite as exciting as magic, or pixies, or even
unicorns. The short answer is that when
it comes to magically providing the people at our collection sites with fresh,
empty boxes, we selected the right business partner for the job: Positive
Fulfilment Services Ltd.
Call2Recycle has been
working with Positive Fulfilment, based in Toronto, Ontario, since March
2001. The organisation sits on the nexus
of highways 407 and 427 just a stone’s throw from Pearson International
Airport, situated perfectly to make the rest of the country accessible for the
customer logistics it hosts. Fulfillment
Service Providers such as Positive, or ‘fulfilment houses’ as they used to be
known, are essentially an outsourced storage and logistics operation. Any organisation intending to sell a product
that needs to be shipped can enter the market without having its own
warehousing or fleet of delivery vehicles, for example, by outsourcing that
entire business function.
It may have been destiny
that Call2Recycle and Positive would end up working together. Positive got its start in the fulfillment
business back in the early 1990s by catering to the needs of pharmaceutical
manufacturers. Just storing
pharmaceuticals in Canada demands a Drug Establishment Licence, a Natural
Health Products Directorate, a Class “A” Precursor Licence, and a Medical
Devices Licence as the minimum. Suffice
to say, there are certain businesses that require ongoing vigilance when it
comes to new legislation, regulations, and laws. “Transporting batteries is no different,”
explains Joe Zenobio, executive director, Call2Recycle Canada, Inc. “We’ve always taken great pride in our ability
to tackle complex legal environments, and because of that we can still say
today that our program is compliant with all relevant legislation, whether
local, national, or international.” So
when Call2Recycle sought partners to help bring all-battery recycling to
Canada, Positive was a natural choice.
Fast-forward to 2014, and
the IT operations of Call2Recycle and Positive are inexorably linked, as are
the destinies of these two Ontario employers.
Together, we are able to assess the rate at which any collection site
fills their boxes and needs new ones.
Brand new sites tend to be given extra boxes to ensure they cannot run
out, but more established sites are easier to predict. Now, the system is triggered whenever a
collection site despatches a full box – sometimes beforehand. A replacement, empty box is already on its
way to the collection site via automated process even before the person there
has picked up the phone. With this
automatic safety factor built into logistics, the Call2Recycle team can
concentrate on seasonal variations, or instances when collaborative marketing
efforts create a spike in collections – such as the Winnipeg Public Library initiative in Q4 2013.
Sadly then we cannot claim
that the humble Call2Recycle boxes you see in retail stores, libraries, fire
stations or private offices are magic.
The process that gets them from Toronto to the rest of Canada isn’t magic
either. However, just as long as it continues
to feel like magic to our customers, that’s positive enough for us.
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