“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.