Outside retailer REI Co-op saved 90 p.c of the discarded packaging and different waste generated at its 190-plus shops, distribution facilities and warehouses out of landfills or incinerators in 2024 — delivering early on a 2025 purpose and edging out different nationwide chains together with Walmart and Goal which have made comparable commitments.
REI’s long-term imaginative and prescient is to grow to be a zero-waste operation, though the 24 million-member co-operative hasn’t printed a goal date for its ambition.
“Being actually zero waste — i.e. 100% diversion from landfill — is an aspiration,” stated Andrew Dempsey, director of local weather at Seattle-based REI, which logged $3.76 billion in gross sales for 2024. “Now we have no timeframe on this, however we hope to enhance diversion throughout our shops by 0.5 p.c this 12 months.”
REI recycled or composted 78 p.c of its waste in 2020, and the corporate reached 86 p.c in 2023. It’s the primary high-profile retailer to report the 90 p.c mark, a declare that was audited and independently verified. The disclosure was made in REI’s newest ESG report, printed Could 8.
Two bigger retail organizations which have made zero waste a high precedence are nonetheless shy of their targets, as of their newest environmental impression progress reviews.
Goal, aiming for zero waste by 2030, was at 85 p.c as of July 2024. Walmart’s diversion charge for 2023 was 83.5 p.c. The world’s largest retailer by income was aiming for 90 p.c diversion within the U.S., Mexico and Canada by the tip of 2025, however acknowledged in February that it’s going to fall in need of the mark.
Decreasing waste performs immediately into retailers’ Scope 3 emissions discount commitments, particularly on the end-of-use stage, Dempsey stated. It additionally offers the REI workforce a really tangible option to contribute to the corporate’s local weather targets.
“Our staff are absolute champions of this work throughout our distribution facilities and our retail fleet,” Dempsey stated. “They contact and really feel [waste] on daily basis. It makes the idea tangible in a means that metric tons of carbon doesn’t.”
Inventive methods to remove single-use plastic
Plastic packaging makes up REI’s largest waste stream, and Dempsey outlined the ways in which the retailer drives down plastic use throughout its operations and removes what winds up in its services:
Trex partnership
REI’s relationship with Virginia-based wooden different producer has turned 2.5 million kilos of polyethylene plastic movie into decking. REI will get paid for sending the baled materials to Trex; it gained’t say how a lot.
Packaging coverage
REI’s private-label attire is rolled and bundled with raffia ties that may be composted. It asks manufacturers to remove single-use packages and expenses a $0.01, per-unit payment for something that doesn’t comply. One sticking level of this coverage is that it requires adjustments to distribution middle processes to guard merchandise from changing into dirty.
“Numerous it comes down to easily cleanliness of conveyor belts which are transferring the product round inside your distribution middle, ensuring that your workers understands why it’s not in plastic and actually what the intention is there,” Dempsey stated.
The payment goes towards the additional back-end work required to bale several types of plastic in order that REI can ship it out to be extra readily recycled. “What we actually wish to do is figure with these model companions to design that plastic out of the system,” Dempsey stated.
New finest practices
Some REI services use the Whole Useful resource Use and Effectivity (TRUE) certification program created by the U.S. Inexperienced Constructing Council, which acknowledges processes that contribute to zero waste. Three distribution facilities are licensed, and a fourth is awaiting recognition.
Round financial system boosters
In 2024, REI offered nearly 1.4 million objects by means of its Re/Provide program, which markets used gear. The enterprise has doubled since 2019. The most well-liked objects are backpacks, sleeping luggage and tents. Tenting objects symbolize roughly 20 p.c of REI’s general gross sales.
The resale enterprise reduces waste at a product’s end-of-use stage. The corporate estimates that the emissions related to making ready these things for resale are about half of these related to the manufacturing of a brand new version.
“Holding gear in use longer is the very best factor you are able to do, each from a local weather standpoint after which clearly from a waste standpoint,” Dempsey stated.
Current additions to REI’s takeback program embrace an initiative to gather and recycle electrical bicycle batteries. The retailer collects different objects which are exhausting to course of, equivalent to bike tires and tubes, and it’s prioritizing refillable gasoline canisters.
REI can also be sourcing extra recycled supplies for its merchandise: roughly 52 p.c of the polyester and 45 p.c of the nylon it sources, based on the model’s newest impression report. And it’s making some working attire from a brand new materials made by LanzaTech, which turns industrial waste gases, together with carbon dioxide, into low-carbon yarn.
