Environmental Sustainability

An online Care2 petition to get Birchbox to stop featuring cosmetics from companies that test products on animals has over 47,000 signatures already. According to a Care2 press release, Massachusetts resident Jess Barnett canceled her Birchbox subscription after discovering that the retailer included samples of products from companies that aren't animal cruelty-free. She started the petition after emails with Birchbox customer service representatives left her feeling dissatisfied with the company's response.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Green Power Partnership's updated list includes 87 retailers, 10 of which were also named to the Leadership Club, with green power usage meeting or exceeding 100 percent of each company's total electricity use. The Green Power Partnership tracks companies that use electricity from clean and renewable sources. Kohl's, Whole Foods Market, Wal-Mart, Staples and Starbucks rank highest on the Top Retailer list, which is ranked by the most annual green power usage in terms of total kilowatt hours. 

Dell is taking major strides toward becoming an even more sustainable electronics retailer. The company will be the first in the IT industry to use carbon-negative packaging and the first to incorporate closed-loop recycled plastics in the assembly of computers. In partnership with Newlight Technologies, Dell will introduce AirCarbon-based plastic packaging this fall — plastics made from air and greenhouse gases instead of commonly used plastics made from fossil fuels.

No. 1 on the list of chores the Internet has done away with: dragging yourself to the store to stock up on unwieldy items and carting them home. Many e-commerce companies - led by Amazon.com and the sites it owns, like Diapers.com and Soap.com — have made it easy t

Yesterday was Earth Day, and Apple used its 424 worldwide retail stores to carry the banner of the company's environmental initiatives, turning the stores’ logos partially green and designating every store as a recycling drop-off location for electronics. The store involvement was part of a larger effort to explain and publicize the company's environmental progress, including a new set of web pages, a video titled "Better" that's narrated by Apple CEO Tim Cook, and a soon-to-be-released report on the company's environmental programs. 

With energy being one of REI's largest impacts on the climate, the company has committed to having all of its electricity come from clean renewable sources. With 26 solar electric systems generating energy and a strong program to invest in energy efficiency, REI now buys certified renewable energy certificates (RECs) as part of its strategy to procure energy from green sources, which now power all of its 130 stores, two distribution centers and company headquarters. Prior to the REC purchase, REI was listed on U.S. EPA Green Power Partnership's "Top 30 Retail," representing the country's largest green power retail users. 

When Eric Ryan helped start Method Products in 2001, the market for environmentally friendly soaps and cleaning products, he recalled, was a "niche of a niche of a niche." No longer. Target, one of the country's largest retailers, announced on Tuesday that it would expand its inventory of "natural, organic and sustainable" goods to meet growing customer demand. The company said it would introduce more than 120 new products over the next several months, and unveiled a new umbrella category for these items: "Made to Matter — Handpicked by Target."

When Lands’ End's green team was looking at ways to improve the company's sustainability, it decided to tackle a catalog problem. The company routinely stuffs a catalog into the package containing clothing being shipped out to a customer who's just placed an order. And often it would end up being the same catalog from which the customer just ordered. Now the company is carefully tracking that to save on the cost of printing a catalog that's headed straight for the recycling bin, said Randy Peterson, Lands’ End's senior director of sustainability.

Target has unveiled its new sustainable product standard, which was developed over the last two years in partnership with industry experts, vendors and NGOs. The new standard is intended to help establish a common language, definition and process for qualifying what makes a product more sustainable. "We know that sometimes it's challenging to pick the sustainable, good-for-you products you're looking for. That's why Target is taking an important step toward greater transparency, which we hope will lead to more sustainable and innovative products," the company said in a statement on its website. 

Nike’s new app Making helps designers and product creators make informed decisions about the environmental impact of the materials they choose. The free app, available to download from iTunes, ranks materials on four impact areas: water, chemistry, energy and waste. The designer-specific tool is easy to use and was created with insights and feedback from students at London College of Fashion's Centre for Sustainable Fashion. They also used the app to create their own capsule collections.