Product Transportation

As a retailer, our business revolves around getting product from around the world into our stores and to our customers. Moving product is a complex process that touches many aspects of REI's operations while connecting with the vendors that send us product.

Highlights

In 2008, product transportation accounted for 12 percent of our greenhouse gas footprint. We experienced a 31 percent increase in the volume of REI-brand gear and apparel shipped internationally compared with 2007 volume. Many of these shipments were for products such as bikes and camp furniture, which are larger, bulkier and more resource-intensive to ship. Overall, however, we only generated 337 more tons of GHGs from product shipping in 2008 versus 2007, or a 2.5 percent increase.

The most sustainable strategy for reducing our environmental impacts, including our carbon footprint, must also make sense from a financial perspective. For example, in 2008, we cut costs and GHGs by choosing to ship products entirely by water to our Bedford, PA distribution center. While it took creative work to balance the needs of our business, this decision coupled with optimizing how we pack shipping containers reduced shipping-related greenhouse gases by 600 tons.

Another key success has been our ability to minimize the need to transport product as air cargo. Air shipment of goods has many times the climate impact of shipping by road, rail, or sea. By better understanding our deadlines for shipping product, we have been able to minimize the need for shipping by plane.

Challenges

Shipping products to our stores, distribution centers and customers will always be a central part of our business and therefore contribute significantly to our environmental footprint. Though the transportation companies we select work to be as efficient as possible, there are still significant barriers to eliminating the climate impact of shipping.

Our work to be more efficient in how we pack and transport product has led to success, but the opportunity for future large gains is diminishing. While we cannot completely eliminate the impact from product transportation, we will continue to pursue the most efficient means for transportation.

Looking Forward

Going forward, we will continue to have two primary goals. First, we will seek smart logistical choices that will allow us to reduce our carbon footprint in the most fiscally responsible ways possible. Second, we will work on optimizing the efficiency of our logistics system, which includes both how we ship product and how we package it to ensure its safe and clean arrival to our stores and customers. We continue to pursue packaging choices to reduce the total size and number of shipments necessary to transport our products (see the Paper Usage as we seek to decrease our climate impact from transportation.