Business Footprint
We believe that businesses should be viewed like individuals – they face choices and they should act responsibly when faced with those choices. They also consume and have their own environmental footprints. We work to consistently take a fresh look at how our business operates and try to make the operational decisions that can best minimize our environmental footprint. Most of the items on our list are fairly straightforward, but the sum of these parts all contribute to minimizing the impact we have on the world around us.
- Our business outputs are modest. As a retailer, we process the large shipments of boxes that come to us from the manufacturers and ultimately send the product to an online customer’s home in a smaller box or out the door in a bag (only if they want one) for a retail customer. We are left with a tremendous amount of cardboard. We are also the temporary owner of boatloads of plastic bags used as packaging by our manufacturers.
- Reuse. When possible, and only if perfectly clean, our first preference is to reuse our cardboard boxes or plastic bags.
- Recycle. Cardboard recycling is pretty straightforward. In Eugene, Oregon, where we are located, we put it into our commingled recycle bin and the recycler picks it up on a regular basis. The recycling market for plastic bags is not very well developed. So, we save the bags on-site and regularly take them to Next Step Recycling - the one facility in town that consolidates plastic bag recycling. In addition to cardboard and plastic bags, our goal is to recycle 100% of our used recyclable paper, aluminum, plastic, and glass. We have recycling containers located abundantly throughout our facilities.
- Paper. We use a fair amount of paper, especially for our customer invoices and return forms. For all of our standard 8.5×11 printing, we use 100% post-consumer recycled unbleached paper (currently Boise Aspen 100).
- Toner cartridges. For all of our office laser printers, we purchase refilled toner cartridges from a local supplier instead of buying new ones.
- Shipping materials. When shipping products to our online customers, we often need a clean liner to separate a piece of clothing from the inside of a cardboard box. Instead of using polyethylene plastic bags, all of the bags we use are made from biodegradable corn (currently Trellis Earth). We have not yet found a supplier that produces 100% recycled cardboard boxes, but the cardboard industry in general is further along than most in incorporating recycled content into boxes. We are in the process of examining whether or not it would be environmentally preferable to send some of our e-commerce shipments in bags suitable for shipping instead of corrugated cardboard boxes.
- We have not yet done a good enough job of providing incentives for our staff to take public transportation, walk, or ride to work. In 2008, our goal is to better quantify the collective carbon footprint of our staff and devise incentives to discourage fossil fuel consumption. One option is to post a big guy with a club at the front door to whack employees who drive. That’s not really our style, though, so we plan to come up with better alternatives.
- Click here to learn how we have designed our facilities to minimize our environmental impact.
