NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Through its social purpose platform, Mission Every One, Macy’s, Inc. is committed to creating a brighter future for all and creating a more equitable and sustainable future. Today, Macy’s, Inc. is providing an update detailing its achievements towards its long-term Sustainability goals – including initiatives that promote circularity throughout its value chain.
“As a leading, omnichannel retailer, we understand the role we play in creating a more equitable and sustainable future for all. We are committed to promoting a more circular economy across our value chain,” said Keelin Evans, vice president of sustainability at Macy’s, Inc. “Our efforts are focused on providing sustainable and ethically produced brands, products, and services to our customers, while reducing our impact on the environment through operations. We’re going to achieve this through our guiding social purpose platform, Mission Every One, and an enterprise-wide collaboration with partners, designers, suppliers, logistics partners, entrepreneurs, colleagues and customers.”
Macy’s aims to advance its sustainable product by offering to include circular solutions and services, prioritizing opportunities that extend the life of a product. To drive this goal and begin the transition to a more circular business, earlier this year, Macy’s became a part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation community, focused on accelerating and enabling the transition to a global, circular economy and FABSCRAP, a non-profit in New York City that helps ensure that the fabric waste – an unavoidable part of the design and development process – is reused, upcycled, downcycled and recycled responsibly.
Over the past year and a half, the company has also introduced several initiatives to reduce, reuse and recycle across its private and market brand product offerings and operations.
To reduce waste, Macy’s Private Brand team has embraced technology that allows the scaling back of the number of physical samples required from suppliers without impacting fit, color and other design considerations. This process has significantly decreased textile waste. In 2019, 5% of samples were digital and by the end of the 2022 development season, 61% of all samples were made virtually. This shift actively keeps product that would otherwise not have use, out of landfills.
Macy’s has also adopted best practices to reduce packaging, including standardizing the size of packing cartons and minimizing packaging materials:
- Auto-boxer and auto-bagger technology enables Macy’s to create unique packaging fitting odd or oversized items and reducing box volume and waste up to 50%.
- In 2022, virgin plastic mailer bags were edited to include 35% recycled content, reducing the thickness of the bag by 20%. As a result, virgin plastic input was reduced by more than 50%.
- All cardboard used by Macy’s fulfillment centers is FSC certified and is comprised of 35% recycled content.
- In Spring of 2022, most packages digital Macy’s orders fulfilled by our fulfillment centers do not include printed invoices to reduce unnecessary waste as customers are able to reference order information in their online accounts and email receipts.
To reuse and extend the life of all products, the Macy’s reverse logistics team is dedicated to moving goods from customers back to the sellers, or manufacturers, or sold to resellers to continue the lifecycle of the product. Through its partnership with Give Back Box, Macy’s customers can contribute to the responsible lifecycle of their clothes, toys and other pre-loved items by downloading a pre-paid shipping label from Macy’s website and sending them to be donated for resale and recycling.
Additionally, both Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s offer accessible care instructions and programs to help customers extend the product life and reduce water and electricity use. For products like Jewelry, Watches and Furniture, repair services are available through WorryNoMore Protection Plans and a partnership with My Jewelry Repair.
As part of its 2025 goal to recycle as much material as possible, the Macy’s beauty products team launched a pilot program to minimize environmental impact by shipping outdated collateral to a third-party to be recycled rather than disposing of it in-store. Macy’s also launched a program to use RFID technology to track participation and weights of store cardboard recycling as part of our goal to increase store recycling rates to 80% by 2025.
These initiatives are some of the latest examples of Macy’s, Inc.’s sustainable initiatives and practices undertaken to create a meaningful impact for people, the planet and the communities we serve. For more information about Macy’s, Inc. sustainability initiatives and reporting, visit macysinc.com/purpose.
About Macy’s, Inc.
At Macy’s, Inc., Inc. (NYSE: M), we are a trusted source for quality brands at great values from off-price to luxury. Across our iconic nameplates, including Macy’s, Inc., Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury, we help our customers express their unique style and celebrate special moments, big and small. Headquartered in New York City, we operate one of retail’s largest e-commerce businesses integrated with a nationwide footprint to deliver the most convenient and seamless shopping experience. Our purpose is to create a brighter future with bold representation – so we can realize the full potential of every one of us. For more information, visit macysinc.com.
About Ellen MacArthur Foundation
The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is an international charity that develops and promotes the circular economy in order to tackle some of the biggest challenges of our time, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution. We work with our network of private and public sector decision-makers, as well as academia, to build capacity, explore collaborative opportunities, and design and develop circular economy initiatives and solutions. Increasingly based on renewable energy, a circular economy is driven by design to eliminate waste, circulate products and materials, and regenerate nature, to create resilience and prosperity for business, the environment, and society.
About FABSCRAP
FABSCRAP is a nonprofit organization that has pioneered a system to recycle and reuse fabric waste, creating an accessible materials resource for creative communities while reducing the fashion industry’s impact on the planet. FABSCRAP has saved over 1.25 million pounds 1 million pounds of fabric from landfill, the CO2-reducing equivalent of planting 138,000 trees.
About Give Back Box
The purpose of Give Back Box® is to provide an effortless and convenient method of donating your used household items. Give Back Box not only provides an easy way to be part of a truly good cause - support over 200 charity partners, it gives a secondary use to corrugated boxes and guarantees they will be recycled.
