Member Story: Michael Amos, Managing Director & Co-founder, Waste to Wonder Worldwide

1. How did you get into CR&S, and why did you choose this profession?
Honestly, I didn't set out to work in corporate responsibility — I didn't even know the term to begin with. I set out to fix something that didn't make sense, and only later realised that what we'd built was a great example of CSR in practice. Back in 2003, I kept seeing perfectly good office furniture and IT equipment being skipped during fit-outs and clearances. Desks, chairs, computers — barely used, heading for landfill, while schools and communities elsewhere had nothing. The gap between those two realities was hard to ignore. Waste to Wonder Worldwide grew out of that. Back when we started, CSR was still in its infancy — we weren't following a trend, we were just doing something that made sense.

2. What makes your sector unique from a CRS perspective?
We sit in an unusual spot — somewhere between commercial workplace and facilities management, the circular economy, and international development. Most CRS conversations default to recycling or carbon offsetting. What we do is upstream of that: starting from the assumption that something can be reused, rather than the usual default of assuming it can't — keeping assets in use at their highest value, intact, rather than breaking them down. A redundant office can furnish a classroom 5,000 miles away. That's not a recycling story, it's a reuse story, and one decision by a single organisation can ripple out into something transformative for another. We're a proud social enterprise, which means our commercial decisions and our social and sustainable outcomes go hand in hand — the same act diverts waste and equips a school, so nobody has to choose between commercial sense and doing good.

3. What do you need to do your job brilliantly?
A strong network and the trust that holds it together. On one side, corporate partners willing to think differently about their surplus; on the other, recipient partners who know their communities far better than we ever could. In between, a process robust enough to depend on but flexible enough to adapt to each partner — so what gets sent genuinely matches what a community needs. Get those three things right and the rest tends to follow. Good CR&S work is rarely hands-off — it's about being a real, present partner to everyone in the chain. For us that means a fully managed service that bridges the gap between companies with redundant equipment and communities in need — meeting the client's operational and budget needs, strengthening their ESG deliverables, and getting equipment to communities where it opens up real opportunities.

4. What are the most essential skills for working in CRS?
Listening, before anything else — and it's more rare than it should be. The pull towards arriving with a ready-made solution is strong, but the work improves the moment you stop and ask what's actually needed. After that it's fairly practical: telling a true story without overselling it, situational awareness, flexibility when projects get challenging, and patience. And above all, a genuine pride in the impact you help create — the work is at its best when you're out there championing what's been achieved and the people behind it.

5. What advice would you give to others on getting into CR&S?
Start with a problem you find genuinely interesting, not with the job title. The field is full of people who can talk fluently about frameworks but struggle to make anything happen on the ground. Get practical experience — see how things actually move, where they get stuck. And be honest. This sector has more than its share of polish and techno jargon, and people can tell the difference between activity and impact, empty promises and genuine, passion pretty quickly.

6. Anything else you'd like to share?
CR&S is all about the why. Celebrating success matters, and we've plenty to be proud of — over £60 million worth of equipment donated to more than a million people across 50 countries. But those numbers are only part of the picture. It's the individual stories that carry the weight. A child who can now attend school. A borehole that means a mother can grow crops where there was only dry ground before. A science classroom kitted out so a spark of ingenuity has somewhere to catch. That's the real measure of it — the partners and communities turning what we send into real change. We're only ever part of that chain. If there's one idea worth holding onto, it's that "waste" is often just opportunity that hasn't been pointed in the right direction yet.