Macy’s Inc. chief administrative officer Tom Cole announced some of the methods the retailer will be using to make itself more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
“Our company has embraced the principles of sustainability, and we continue to take actions that are tangible, measurable and meaningful in reducing our use of scarce resources and improving the efficiency of our business in serving customer needs,” Cole said in a statement.
Those efforts include new recycled hangers, more LED light bulbs in its stores, the elimination of foam packaging in its in-store restaurants, roof-top solar panels, online billing, customer incentives for household recycling and even self-serve electric vehicle charging stations outside some stores.
The new recycled matte black plastic hangers will replace clear ones, which are costlier and more difficult to make and recycle. Macy’s says its stores use about 300 million hangers per year.
This year, the retailer will install more than 250,000 LED light bulbs in 200 stores. Macy’s cut energy consumption by up to 73 percent in the 95 stores that it installed LED bulbs in last year.
The company’s online fulfillment center in Goodyear, Ariz. will be getting one of the nation’s largest roof-top solar power systems in May, and nine stores will get their own systems by the end of the year, bringing the total number of store and fulfillment/distribution solar systems to 49.
And finally, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s say they have reduced paper use by 520,000 pounds per year by encouraging online billing instead of mailed paper credit card statements. As of March this year, 4.1 million of its customers had switched to online billing statements.
