For the purposes of this Privacy Policy, “Personal Information” is information or an opinion about you as an identified individual or an individual who is reasonably identifiable, whether or not the information or opinion is true and whether or not it is recorded in a material form.  “Sensitive Information is a subset of Personal Information which includes health information. 

The Privacy Act does not apply to ‘employee records’ where that employee record is being used for a practice that relates directly to a current or former employment relationship.  ‘Employee records’ are records of Personal Information relating to the employment of the employee.  The Privacy Act does apply to employee records where it is being used for a purpose/practice that does not relate directly to the employment relationship.  It also applies to the Personal Information of employment applicants.

The Personal Information we collect depends on your relationship with us – whether you are a client, supplier or a prospective employee.  It also depends on the nature of the product or service being provided to you and/or requested by you.   Generally, we will collect:

• your contact details such as name, address, email address and phone number and if relevant, credit card details;
• any Personal Information provided by you to us in any way, including as part of testimonials, feedback and/or complaints submitted by you via our website;

We collect Personal Information from you in a number of ways, including through our website.  For example:

• when you submit the information to us via our website or mobile application or via email, when you complete an online enquiry;
• from you when you submit an order via any online ordering service we make available to purchase our products or services;
• from you when you provide us with such information via employment application forms, customer feedback forms, when you participate in a competition, when you participate in online discussion boards, or engage our social medial pages such as X (formerly known as Twitter), LinkedIn and FaceBook;
• through analysis of the Social Media Sites conducted by us or by third parties on our behalf;
• from third parties such as credit reporting agencies, recruitment agencies, referees nominated by you, or your representatives;

• from you when you engage with us in relation to supplying goods and services to us;

• from publicly available sources of information; and
• from our own records.

We may combine Personal Information we receive from you with other information, including information received from third parties or from publicly available sources of information.

When you look at our website, we may make a record of your visit. The following information may be logged for statistical purposes and for the purposes of marketing and advertising to you:

• your internet protocol address;
• the date and time of your visit to our site;
• the pages that you have accessed and the documents downloaded; and
• the type of browser you were using.

This type of statistical information does not identify you.

Tracking technologies such as cookies may be used on our website to recognise a user’s browser each time that user visits our site and to track which pages the user visits whilst on our site and also to send advertisements to your internet protocol address.  Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to a computer’s hard disk for record keeping purposes. Most web browsers are set to accept tracking technologies such as cookies. These tracking technologies do not personally identify the user.  If you do not wish to receive any cookies you may set your browser to refuse them.  However, your use of our website may be affected.

We may collect your personal information when you contact us, purchase or use our products or services, register with us online, participate in our online discussion boards or enter our competitions, contribute to one of our social media pages (such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook), attend an event, apply for a job with us, and/or provide services to us.

The main purposes for which we collect and use your Personal Information are:

• to conduct our retail activities (including through our website);
• to develop and enhance and provide quality assurance for our products and services;
• to respond to your enquiries, feedback and complaints regarding our business and our products and services;
• to monitor the performance of our business;
• to conduct research and plan and develop our product strategies;
• to provide and operate our competitions, events and promotions;
• to market and promote our products and services including email marketing, promotional and educative activities;
• to enforce the terms and conditions of our engagement with you; and
• to comply with our legal obligations.

You may elect not to identify yourself or you may use a pseudonym in your dealings with us, except where it is impracticable for us to deal with you on this basis (for example, we will need to identify you in order to provide most of our products and services). You can always choose not to give us your information or remain anonymous, but if you, do we may not be able to provide you (or our client) with the products and services that you (or they) have asked for.

We may from time to time, communicate with you directly to promote our products or services.  On each communication, we will advise how you may unsubscribe or opt out of receiving such communications.  You may, at any time, request not to receive direct marketing communications from us and we will comply with that request.  You can do this by calling us on  +61 3 8560 0419 or on admin@egl.com.au.

We may disclose your Personal Information (including, in certain limited circumstances, your Sensitive Information):

• to facilitate any of the purposes mentioned above;
• to entities who assist us in providing and administering our products and services and our events and promotions (including hosting, data storage, payment systems, printing and scanning providers and debt collectors); 
• to third parties that promote and market, or conduct research to help us improve and target, our products and services;
• to third party consultants who may from time to time manage all or part of our database or computer systems or internet sites;
• to a third party where we outsource any of our functions, including but not limited to development, production and/or printing of advertising and marketing material and campaigns, including where such material contains photos or video of individuals, customer satisfaction surveys, and to facilitate online ordering services;
• of or incidental to a sale of all or part of our business, to prospective purchasers and their representatives;
• to the general public, for example, via internet when notifying of competition results or via media when photographs or video are used in advertising material or campaigns;
• where we are required to do so by law.

When you enter into a competition we are running or participate in a sponsored event, we may seek, as a condition of entry, consent to pass your information to a promoter or sponsor of the competition or event.  If we do this, we will notify you at the time of entering into the competition or event with us.

We may disclose your Personal Information to our related bodies corporate located overseas, located in Ireland, to assist us in delivering our products and services.

In addition, some programs, software, online tools or Social Media Sites used by us and/or our third party service providers, are based in and/or housed overseas.  The use of such programs by us or by our third-party service providers may involve disclosure of your Personal Information to such organisations overseas.  Use and disclosure of your Personal Information by such organisations is in accordance with the terms and conditions and privacy policies of such organisations.

See the table below showing the products we use (which may change from time to time) and links to their privacy policies:

We hold your personal information in electronic files. We may store your personal information with one or more third party data storage providers.

We take all reasonable steps to ensure that the Personal Information we hold is protected from misuse, interference and loss, and unauthorised access, modification or disclosure by the use of various methods:

• taking measures to restrict access to personnel who need such information in order for us to be able to provide our products and services;
• technological measures, such as computer passwords with Multi Factor Authentication, data back-up, anti-virus and anti-malware software and firewalls; and
• 24×7 cyber-security monitoring and surveillance or networks and server infrastructure;

Where we store your Personal Information with a third-party data storage provider, we require them to keep it secure and only use or disclose it for the purpose for which it was provided.

Please note that our website does not provide systems for secure transmission of Personal Information across the internet, except where otherwise indicated. When emailing or providing Personal Information to us via our website, please be aware that there are risks involved in transmitting Personal Information via the internet. Our website may contain links to other websites. We have no control over the privacy practices employed at other websites and we accept no responsibility for Personal Information provided via unsecured websites.

We cannot provide a guarantee with respect to the security of your Personal Information and we will not be liable for any breach of security or unintended loss or disclosure of information due to the website being linked to the internet.

Orders submitted through our online ordering service must be paid for by credit card or debit card via a payment facility provided by a third-party payment gateway provider. 

We do not collect or store your credit card or debit card details.  By placing an online order with us, you are providing your credit card or debit card information to the third-party payment gateway provider and not to us. 

Whilst we have taken reasonable steps to ensure the third-party payment gateway provider will comply with privacy laws, we cannot provide a guarantee with respect to the security of your payment information. 

Please contact us immediately if you become aware or have reason to believe there has been any unauthorised use of your Personal Information that we hold.

You may request access to your Personal Information by writing to us or contacting us at any time at the details below.  We will need to verify your identity before we can give you access.  We will promptly acknowledge receipt, and we will endeavour to deal with and respond to your request within a reasonable time (usually within two weeks). 

In certain circumstances, we are permitted by law to refuse access to your Personal Information (such as where providing access would have an unreasonable impact upon the privacy of other individuals, or would reveal commercially sensitive information). 

In such cases, we will give you a written explanation for our decision (including, where applicable, an alternative means of access to the information, such as supervised inspection), and how you can complain if you are not satisfied with our decision.

You will not be charged for making a request for your Personal Information.  However, we may charge a fee to provide your Personal Information to cover administrative costs (including for supervised inspection).  We will inform you of any fee at the time we respond to your request.

If you think that any Personal Information we hold about you is inaccurate, incomplete, out-of-date or irrelevant, you may ask us to correct it.  We will take reasonable steps to correct it unless we disagree with your reasons.  If we refuse to correct your personal information we will give you a written explanation why.

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or consider that we have breached your privacy, you can contact us at:

The Environment Group Limited
Level 2, 315 Ferntree Gully Road
Mount Waverly Victoria 3149,

Australia
Email: admin@egl.com.au

Telephone: +61 3 8560 0419

We will endeavour to resolve your complaint as soon as possible. However, the length of time will depend on the nature and complexity of the issues you have raised.

You will receive an acknowledgement of receipt of the complaint from us within five business days. We will give you an estimate of how long it may take us to deal with the matter but we will endeavour to finalise the matter within 30 days.

If we decide that your complaint is justified, we will then decide what action we should take in response. We will always try to match our response to the nature of your complaint and your desired outcome, but this may not always be possible.

Some of the things that we may decide to do include:

• take steps to rectify the problem or issue you have raised;
• provide you with you additional information or advice so that you can understand what happened and how we have dealt with it;
• take steps to change our policies or procedures if your complaint identifies a problem in the way we are doing things.

It will not always be possible to resolve a complaint to everyone’s satisfaction. In that case, you might want to escalate the matter to the Privacy Commissioner via an online privacy complaint form which can be found at: https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-complaints/lodge-a-privacy-complaint-with-us.