The retail industry is full of unsustainable practices that have a serious impact on carbon emissions. It stems from terrible manufacturing processes but extends to the retail stores themselves. In this post, we’ll review a few simple ways that every retail company can cut its carbon footprint and be more sustainable. It’s not rocket science and the ideas won’t eat into your budget.
Table of Contents
Go paperless
In years gone by, retail stores would rely on paper for lots of things. Paper documents detailing stock inventory were essential, as were paper receipts or accountancy books. Now, there’s no need for any of this. It’s very easy to go paperless in a retail business if you try hard enough.
Instead of paper receipts, make customers provide their email or phone number to get a digital one. Or, use a QR code with every transaction that customers can scan if they want a receipt. Stop using paper timetables or scheduling sheets and switch to a retail scheduling app instead. Everyone can see who’s working when, so you don’t need to pin things to the break room wall. And of course, all bookkeeping and stock tracking can be done digitally via various apps.
Now, if you struggle to go completely paperless, it’s okay to use it now and then. The main problem is receipts – some people may not want to return if they don’t get a paper receipt. Here, simply introduce the option of asking if they want a receipt or not. It stops you from needlessly printing one out, saving paper.
Stop providing single-use bags
As a retail company, you don’t always have control over product packaging. We’d love to tell you to avoid plastic packaging wherever possible, but it’s not always feasible. Instead, you can focus on single-use plastics elsewhere, such as in the bags you provide to customers.
It’s something you should completely wipe from your business. Stop providing single-use bags and offer more eco-friendly options instead. Sell bags made from recycled plastics or sustainable materials that can be used again and again. At the same time, charge a premium for these bags. It helps you make a bit more money while encouraging customers to bring their own bags in the future.
Nobody wants to spend an extra $5 every time they come to your store, so this does a fantastic job of forcing customers to follow more sustainable practices too. All the while you’ve eradicated single-use plastic bags from your store, which massively reduces the amount of plastic waste produced every year.
Work with more sustainable suppliers
You can’t run a retail business without products to sell. Sadly, this is where lots of the carbon emissions come from. It’s not necessarily all to do with product production, but rather product shipping/transportation. If you work in the US and source products from Europe, how are they getting to you? They’ll either spend hours in the air or days at sea before being thrown into a delivery truck and trundled to your store. It can take weeks before you see products after ordering them, which means they come with a huge carbon footprint.
Instead, try to find more sustainable suppliers. Try to source local products from local businesses. You’ll support the local economy while reducing transportation time. Already, this will cut your carbon footprint and make your retail business more sustainable. You can go one step further and be more picky when choosing transportation suppliers as well.
Some logistics companies provide more efficient modes of transport than others. This may mean they use electric vans or hybrid trucks. If you work with suppliers like this, it further reduces your carbon footprint and makes every delivery more sustainable.
Improve inventory management
As a final small footnote, you need to improve inventory management in your retail business. Why? Because it stops you from over or under-ordering products. If you have a stockroom full of unsold items it means your business is truly unsustainable. You’ve wasted energy getting the products delivered to you and now you have to find a safe way to offload them.
If you order too few products, you’ll rely on more deliveries to keep your store stocked. As you can imagine, this bumps up the carbon footprint and cancels out all the hard work you put into finding sustainable delivery providers! Good inventory management means you have enough stock at all times without too much surplus.
Retail businesses can be more sustainable than they currently are. In fact, looking through these ideas shows there’s no excuse. A few small changes here and there will reduce the negative impact your retain store has on the environment.
