RETAIL AND THE ENVIRONMENT
The North Face Recycles 1.5 Million Polybags
No one has been more tuned in to climate change than outdoor apparel company The North Face.
Many of its customers are climbing those mountains where the snow pack is shrinking or have seen the effect of drought on hiking trails and wildlife habitat.
With that in mind, The North Face for the past two years has been asking 25 of its retail stores to participate in a program with TerraCycle where they make sure that those polyethylene bags used to ship clothing are recycled. And they have been pretty successful. Together the two companies have kept 1.5 million plastic polybags, equaling more than 62,000 pounds of plastic, out of U.S. landfills.
The bags are being recycled into a variety of different products such as plastic lumber, bike racks and pavers.
The North Face has also been trying to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases its operations emit into the air. In a survey, it found that 58 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions come from its distribution centers. With that in mind, it installed a one-megawatt solar panel at its distribution center in Visalia, Calif., which is now supplying 25 percent of the huge distribution center's energy needs while saving 950 metric tons of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the air every year.
