Since 1997, Planet Dog has made sustainability a priority. We carry these efforts into our popular flagship Company Store in Portland, Maine. Our staff are committed to making our store an example of how greener decisions make the store better as a whole.
Here are 6 things our Company Store is doing to reduce our carbon pawprint:
- Re-using shipping boxes and packing materials – The Company Store is right down the road from Planet Dog’s headquarters. All re-usable boxes that come in from orders and deliveries are brought over to headquarters to be repackaged and sent back out. By reusing boxes and packing materials, our shipping center doesn’t need to use as many new boxes.
- Removing header cards for reuse – When applicable, we remove header cards from products after they are purchased by a happy customer. The header cards can be sent back to headquarters and used on new products.
- Mindfulness around energy consumption – The Company Store turns off lights in areas not in use and at night. Thermostats are also turned down at night. Both efforts reduce energy use and provide a cost savings. We also use LED lightbulbs.
- Donate returned and shelf expired food to shelters – Sometimes food is returned because a dog doesn’t like it and sometimes dog food hits its expiration date while on our shelves. Instead of making that waste, we donate this food to area shelters.
- Manage airflow – By adding skirts to our doors, sealing windows and cracks, and rethinking the layout in our store we were able to manage airflow and heat loss.
- Offering re-usable bags – This year we also added re-usable bags to our inventory. Customers are loving their Planet Dog canvas reusable bags!
From snout to tail, we are trying to regularly up our sustainability game. Some steps are small and some are huge, sweeping efforts. Our Company Store is an excellent example of how we are thinking about each piece of our pawprint and how we can reduce our energy consumption and waste and reuse items that come through our doors.
We hope you will join us in our sustainability journey!
This article was originally published on the Planet Dog Blog.
