All businesses, regardless of its size and scope, undeniably impact the environment. REI's ongoing success is reliant on natural spaces for all to enjoy, which reinforces why stewardship is intentionally included in our core purpose.

We are focused on five strategies to help our company thrive while reducing our environmental footprint and improving the health of the natural world. They are:

• Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)

• Finding sustainable solutions to our paper usage

• Reducing waste and optimizing recycling

• Building and operating green buildings

• Addressing the challenges of product stewardship

These areas contain many interconnections – for example, packaging design as part of product stewardship influences the transportation of goods, the waste we generate, and the amount and type of paper or plastic that is used. They also represent REI's greatest opportunities to collaborate with others to create broader positive impacts. In pursuit of this, we collaborate with our industry partners, the communities we serve, and nonprofit organizations in many areas of our business.

In 2010, REI's leadership adopted a comprehensive set of environmental lenses, including an immediate 2011 focus on energy use, greenhouse gasses, and waste-to-landfill. The full framework closely matches the set of environmental lenses adopted by the Outdoor Industry Association in the Eco Index. As part of this work, we reconfirmed our environmental "north star" aspirations, clarified organizational governance and accountability, and created a process to set five-year goals and annual environmental budgets that tie directly into our strategic and financial planning.

Formal metrics for REI include energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and waste. Future metrics, which will be adopted over the next few years, will include water, toxics, and land use and biodiversity.

Our 2010 methodology for measuring our environmental impacts is based on best practices to assess each area of our environmental footprint.

Comments

We welcome your thoughts on our 2010 stewardship report through the following survey or via email at stewardship@rei.com. Your feedback supports our ongoing goal of providing relevant information that is important to our members, customers, partners, employees and others.