Late last week US department store retailer Macy’s introduced its 2020 Sustainability Report and of course Retail Brands played a significant role in the report. Highlights include:
- By 2025 the retailer expects to reduce water use by third-parties manufacturing Macy’s private brands by 25% against a 2019 baseline in areas of “high water stress.”
- The development and implementation of their first Private Brand Restricted Substance List covering apparel, footwear and home textiles in 2022 and non-apparel product categories beginning in 2024
- By 2025, Macy’s intends to have 40% of its private brand products made with preferred sustainable fibers.
- By 2025, all beauty, baby care, personal care and household cleaning products on Macy’s website will be required to disclose their ingredients.
Our Sustainable Stewardship Goals
We developed our Sustainable Stewardship Goals to align with and advance our corporate strategy and to create shared value for our company and our stakeholders. First established in 2018, in 2021 we enhanced our goals to reflect our more ambitious sustainability aspirations.
| Our Ambition | Enhanced 2025 Goals | |
| Natural Resources | Operate efficiently and adopt environmentally friendly solutions | Reduce energy consumption by 10% from a 2018 baseline.
Implement policy to guide claims that products reduce water consumption. Reduce water use by Private Brand’s third-party manufacturing by 25% against a 2019 baseline in areas of high water stress. |
| Waste & Recycling | Recycle as much material as possible | Increase in-store recycling rate to 80%. |
| Materials & Fibers | Incorporate more sustainably sourced raw materials and fibers into our Private Brand products | Implement policies for Macy’s key materials, including cotton, synthetic and all wood-based materials, that support achieving 100% preferred materials in Private Brand by 2030.
40% of Private Brand products made with preferred sustainable fibers, as defined by policies for each of Macy’s key materials. |
| Chemical Management | Continue to remove unwanted chemicals and increase the transparency of designated Private Brand product lines | Develop and implement our first Private Brand Restricted Substance List (RSL) covering apparel, footwear and home textiles in 2022, with additional lists to follow through 2025.
Implement a corporate chemical policy laying out our key principles for management, restriction and disclosure. Require ingredient disclosure on Macy’s website for all beauty, baby care, personal care and household cleaning products. 75% of Private Brand apparel and soft textiles will be OEKO-TEX STD 100 certified and compliant to the hazard profile established in the Macy’s RSL/MRSL. |
| Products | Offer more products that are sustainable and eco-conscious | Expand the current sustainable products offering beyond third-party certifications to include sustainable innovations, specifically in the area of circular solutions. Prioritize opportunities that extend the life of a product.
Help our customer find and choose more sustainable products, by adding an additional 5,000 product pages to the macys.com sustainability sitelet. This will include merchandise from all product categories in Macy’s digital assortment. |
| Sourcing | Improve social responsibility and environmental performance among our Private Brand suppliers | Building upon our strong company culture, establish a worker well-being culture with our suppliers, ensuring workers heath and safety, access to proper grievance channels to receive complaints, woman’s empowerment, absences of any child or forced labor, reasonable working hours and freedom of association and collective bargaining and environmental protection.
Include compliance requirements that support a worker well being culture in our routine social and environmental audits of 100% of our Strategic Tier 1 Private Brand supplier facilities. |
| Diversity | Integrate diversity and inclusion into all aspect of our business | Colleagues
Marketing
Suppliers
|
About the Author: Christopher Durham
