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SEATTLE, WA — A growing adventure travel division helped drive overall greenhouse gas emissions up 11 percent in 2008 for the one of the country’s best-known outdoor equipment retailers.
That in turn led to a jump in the amount of carbon offsets purchased by Recreational Equipment, Inc., the Washington-based cooperative that set a goal of achieving carbon neutral status by 2020. Air travel is the only segment of REI’s business for which the company buys offsets -- a situation that is unlikely to change in the near-term, the company said Tuesday.
“As previously noted, no viable climate-neutral solution currently exists in the travel industry to eliminate the negative climate impact generated from air travel,” REI said in its 2008 Stewardship report released yesterday. “Perhaps someday, the use of biofuels or other improvements in technology may be viable options. As REI Adventures continues to grow, the climate impact of travel associated with this portion of our business will continue to be our largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions.”
Corporate travel at REI declined nearly 16 percent due to efforts in cutting expenditures.
In a bid to achieve carbon neutrality, as well as make progress on a 2009 goal of cutting emissions by a third below 2006 levels, the company launched a retail solar initiative in 2008 that resulted in the retrofit of 11 company stores, or 10 percent, including seven stores in California, three in Oregon, and its new prototype store in Round Rock, Texas, which recently won a sustainable design award from the Association for Retail Environments. Green power comprised 24 percent of REI’s electricity needs.
Electricity and natural gas account for 27 percent of the company’s overall carbon footprint. Electricity use at the company grew 10 percent in 2008, partly due to the opening of a new distribution center and nine new stores.
Other highlights of REI’s Stewardship Report include:
• Products sporting REI’s ecoSensitive label ballooned from 40 in 2007 to more than 250 last year. The company strengthened the criteria last year for the label, which dictates that a product is made from a high percentage of organic and/or renewable fibers, such as hemp, bamboo, or post-industrial recycled polyester.
• REI recycled about 82 percent of its operational waste by weight in 2008, and 73 percent by volume. The company has set a zero waste-to-landfill goal by 2020, and a 50 percent reduction in waste-to-landfill between 2006 and 2009.
• Single-occupancy commuting shrank from 66 percent in 2007 to 50 percent in 2008. Its carbon dioxide impact per employee declined 21 percent. Total commute-related emissions grew 7 percent due to an increase in the number of REI employees.
• Although nearly 26 percent of the company’s paper products were FSC-certified, the company acknowledged its goal of purchasing less than 7 percent of paper products from unknown or undesirable paper sources will be hard to meet due to lack of supply. Total paper use grew by 5 percent, compared to 7.3 percent business growth.
• The company’s Bedford, Pa., distribution center earned LEED Silver certification in 2008. REI also opened new prototype store in Round Rock, Texas.
REI back-story on Off-Sets
I direct REI’s CSR program and want to offer some background about our GHG emissions work and our decision to use offsets. As with most sustainability issues, there is often a lot more to the story.
In general, we focus on real GHG reductions as our way to achieve our aspiration of being Climate Neutral by 2020, but the case of REI Adventures is a good example of finding an impact we didn’t expect, and then finding a creative solution to it.
Why do we include REI Adventures anyway?
While there is a lot of talk about “carbon footprint”, it might be surprising to learn that the first step is figuring out one’s GHG inventory is to decide what’s “in” and what’s “out.” World Resources Institute (WRI) www.ghgprotocol.org gives guidance on counting direct emissions (smoke stacks and tailpipes) and electricity, but after that, companies are largely on their own to choose what they count or don’t count (which is why reporting and transparency is so important). At REI, the first 2 categories (Scope I and II) are only 28% of our inventory. The other 72% of what we count comes from our own decisions about what’s “in” (scope III). This includes things like employee commuting (14%) and shipping packages to our internet customers (6%). Here’s the whole pie chart of what we count: http://www.rei.com/aboutrei/csr/2008/greenhouse-gas-emissions.html.
When we created our first GHG inventory in 2006 we decided to count the flights of REI Adventure customers. We reasoned that although we usually didn’t book the air travel, we sponsored the trip, so we counted all the impacts. We were surprised when it turned out to be 1/3 of our total carbon footprint.
The next thing we faced was a simple question: If the trips have such a large impact, should we sponsor them? Ultimately we decided that organizing trips to great adventure destinations supported the REI mission and we could do “good” by helping communities see more economic benefits from tourism than through resource extraction. It also creates cross culture connections and helps our travelers become stewards of great places all over the world – but, the air travel has impacts that we had to own.
So what are we doing about it?
In almost every other category – energy, product transportation, etc. -we are working on reducing the source of emissions. Finding creative business ways to switch to renewable energy for example, benefits the business and the environment. Since we couldn’t change the fuel in the aircraft we had to find another way to do something about the impacts of our member’s REI Adventure trips, so we partnered with Bonneville Environmental Foundation www.b-e-f.org. We purchase Renewable Energy Certificates certified under the Green-e climate program www.green-e.org/getcert_ghg.shtml. In addition to off-setting the impact of flights, we are creating market demand and supporting renewable energy which has the additional benefit of encouraging a market shift for green power.
Kevin Hagen
Director Corporate Social Responsibility, REI