Saks Impact

Environmental Responsibility & Ethical Sourcing

We’re Committed to Driving Lasting Change

As the premier ecommerce platform for luxury fashion, we have a responsibility to our customers, employees and communities to make a positive impact on our planet. We see this as a long-term journey, with clear commitments to implement sustainable practices that enable Saks to drive meaningful and lasting change.

Our Sustainability Roadmap

We’ve developed a comprehensive sustainability roadmap based on third-party materiality assessments of our environmental, social and governance processes and procedures. The commitments we’ve identified will guide our sustainability journey through 2030, and fall within five key areas: merchandise, waste, climate, giving back and ethical sourcing.

Chloé

Merchandise

We’re committed to offering a variety of validated, consciously made luxury products that customers can shop easily and with confidence. To do that, we’ll:

  • Identify key categories where we can offer an assortment of sustainable products and curate an easy-to-shop collection for our customers.
  • Develop clear guidelines for the sustainable products we offer, so that customers can shop with confidence.
  • Increase socially and environmentally responsible materials within select categories of our private label merchandise.

Waste

We’re committed to operating with zero waste in our fulfillment centers, and using responsible shipping materials while improving our customers’ unboxing experience. With that in mind, we’ll work toward:

  • Right-sizing our customer shipping boxes, reducing packaging material and improving solid-waste management across our operations. In 2022, we reduced the amount of tissue paper in all our packaged orders shipped from our fulfillment centers and moved to a new type of recyclable packing material. Through this effort, we saw a 65% reduction in annual tissue paper use in our packaging.
  • Offering customers more sustainable, plastic-free packaging options, and continuing to add certified, recycled content and recyclable material everywhere we can. In 2023, we transitioned to paper mailers for certain items that previously shipped in boxes. We expect to replace approximately 660,000 boxes annually. Our paper mailers are Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Certified, verified curbside recyclable where available and made with 50% post-consumer waste (recycled content).
  • Conducting a third-party baseline audit of our operations and prioritizing the areas of greatest opportunity, such as reducing the amount of corrugated cardboard and paper fill.
  • Developing a plan to divert landfill trash, such as pallets, paper, plastic and food waste.
  • Partnering with our packaging suppliers to provide more sustainably sourced materials and decrease the use of virgin materials.
  • Enabling our employees to reduce and eliminate waste in our offices, including the use of single-use plastics.

Climate

We’re developing a comprehensive climate strategy, led by a steering committee of senior executives, that will cover the reduction of emissions across our value chain. Our plans include:

  • Partnering with key stakeholders to develop concrete actions to reduce our impact in line with leading climate science and the Paris Agreement.
  • Completing our Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventory using FY22 as a baseline. Our initial focus will be on our Scope 1 operational emissions, Scope 2 purchased electricity emissions and partial Scope 3 emissions, which include upstream logistics, employee commuting, business travel and indirect purchases. As a second step, we will quantify the rest of our Scope 3 emissions from purchased goods and services, which constitute the largest portion of our footprint. In 2023, we completed our first-ever greenhouse gas emissions inventory (Scope 1, Scope 2 and partial Scope 3), which we will leverage to create meaningful climate targets aligned with a 1.5°C warming trajectory.
  • Publishing our GHG emissions data and emissions reductions strategy for Scopes 1, 2 and 3 in 2024.
  • Working with our manufacturing, logistics and supply chains to drive impact on the reduction of emissions through operational and fleet optimizations.
  • Working with our brand partners and industry peers to develop best practices that support our goals.

Giving Back

We’re expanding our efforts within our employee volunteering program, Saks Serves, to support environmental nonprofits and provide meaningful opportunities for our employees to give back. We’re striving to make a positive impact in areas where we live and work by partnering with community-level environmental programs that support the surrounding areas of our corporate office, fulfillment centers and photo studios. To accomplish this, we will:

  • Partner with organizations that support environmental conservation and preservation, and offer volunteer opportunities with these organizations for our hybrid and remote employees throughout the year.

Ethical Sourcing Program

We expect our partners to demonstrate a commitment to the improving working conditions and the natural environment. All of our suppliers must meet our supply chain requirements.

  • Our Supplier Code of Conduct applies to all partners that produce merchandise sold at saks.com, including our private label vendors.
  • Our Social Compliance Program is designed to evaluate and assess our partners’ performance against our Supplier Code of Conduct. We require our private label vendors and brands for which we are the importer of record to participate in this program. Factories must be approved for social compliance before they supply merchandise to Saks.
  • Factories in this program are required to participate in an approved audit. Remediation of audit findings is required to remain a Saks vendor partner.