Best Buy

At Best Buy, we’re committed to reducing our impact on the planet. And we want to help our customers to do the same.

We know many people care about sustainability and want to use less energy at home.  So, we’re helping them reduce their carbon footprints and save money in the process.

In fact, we’ve set a goal to help our customers reduce their own carbon emissions 20% by 2030 through the use of ENERGY STAR certified products. That would also help them save more than $5 billion on their energy bills.

Nearly half of our customers end up selecting an ENERGY STAR certified product when available, and more than 56 million ENERGY STAR certified products have been purchased at Best Buy since 2017. As a result, our customers have collectively reduced their carbon emissions by the equivalent of removing 3 million cars off the roads for an entire year, and they’ll save more than $2.5B in energy costs over the lifetime of their products.

That means we’re now over halfway to our goal of helping our customers save $5 billion on their energy bills. This progress is driven partly by our growing appliance market share. But while that has put us ahead of pace on our goal for customer savings, it has also impacted the total carbon emissions from the products we have sold. Our product emissions have not materially changed from 2017 to 2020, and we recognize we have work ahead to achieve our 2030 carbon goal.

“It has never been more important for us to focus our attention on finding ways to reduce total product emissions so we can achieve our customer impact goals,” said Hugh Cherne, associate director of environmental sustainability at Best Buy. “We are eager and committed to addressing this challenge,”

Here are some of the key strategies we’re using to help our customers live more sustainably.

Offering and promoting ENERGY STAR certified products

To accelerate our progress, our merchants work with our manufacturers to offer a variety of energy-efficient products while also promoting these products through our external channels.

When it comes to tech and appliances, ENERGY STAR is the best mark to identify products that use less energy and less water. For example, ENERGY STAR certified washing machines use about 25% less energy and 33% less water than regular washers. Over the lifetime of the product, an ENERGY STAR washer can save $370 in energy costs.

Sustainable products resources

Whether it’s online or in stores, we want to make it easy for our customers to find energy-efficient products. In our stores, the ENERGY STAR logo is featured on the tag that sits next to the device for certified products.

On BestBuy.com, where a growing number of our customers are shopping, it’s easy to find ENERGY STAR certified products by using our filtering tool. Additionally, we have a page on BestBuy.com that’s all about ENERGY STAR, where customers can learn about best practices for reducing their energy usage at home.

In addition to providing a variety of ENERGY STAR certified products, we also now offer products online that are designed for sustainable living. This includes renewable energy solutions such as solar panels, green transportation, gardening, water saving devices and more. 

Reducing our own carbon footprint

Meanwhile, we continue to work toward reducing carbon emissions in our own operations. In 2019, we set an ambitious, science-based goal to reduce carbon emissions within our operations 75% by 2030.

Last year, we joined The Climate Pledge, committing to being carbon neutral by 2040, a full decade faster than our previous goal of 2050. And CDP recently named Best Buy to its prestigious Climate A List for the fourth consecutive year.

Our carbon goals are certified by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a collaboration between CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Sustainability has been at the core of what we do at Best Buy for decades, and now we’re making our biggest commitment yet to positively impact the planet.

Today, we announced we have signed The Climate Pledge, a commitment to be carbon neutral across our business by 2040 — a decade faster than our previous goal of 2050.

The Climate Pledge was co-founded by Amazon and Global Optimism in 2019 to mobilize companies across multiple business sectors to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, 10 years ahead of the United Nations’ Paris Agreement on Climate Change. By signing the pledge, we are joining businesses around the world, including Mercedes-Benz and Verizon, in making this commitment.

As a signatory of The Climate Pledge, we will:

• Measure and report greenhouse gas emissions on a regular basis.
• Implement decarbonization strategies in line with the Paris Agreement through real business change and innovations, including efficiency improvements, renewable energy, materials reductions and other carbon emission elimination strategies.
• Take actions to neutralize any remaining emissions with additional, quantifiable, real, permanent and socially beneficial offsets that achieve net-zero annual carbon emissions by 2040.

“We are a purposeful, values-driven company, with a long history of environmental work that includes meaningfully reducing our carbon footprint and helping our customers do the same,” Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said. “We are proud to take the next step by committing to The Climate Pledge. Simply put, our customers and employees expect this degree of commitment from us and the planet demands it.”

Reducing our carbon footprint

To achieve the goals outlined in the pledge,  we will continue to drive energy efficiency programs across all of our stores, reduce transportations emissions, invest in permanent renewable energy sources and offer products to help customers reduce emissions 20 percent by 2030.  

Since 2009, we have been working to reduce our carbon emissions and have achieved major milestones through our sustainability program. We have decreased our environmental impact by 55% with initiatives, including the introduction of a Geekmobile fleet comprised of hybrid vehicles and investing in Best Buy Solar Field, which generates enough clean electricity to power the equivalent of 260 Best Buy stores each year. 

Additionally, we launched a new product category that helps customers reduce their carbon footprint, and we continue to operate an e-waste recycling program at our stores that has collected more than 2 billion pounds of electronics and appliances from customers.  

Over the years, our environmental work has landed us on the top five of Barron’s list of the 100 Most Sustainable Companies in America for three straight years. We’ve also been recognized on the CDP Climate A List, where we ranked in the top tier of companies fighting climate change. 

We will continue to push forward in our efforts to take care of the planet and help our customers do the same.  

“As the urgency of climate change has grown, so have our commitments to protect our planet,” said Tim Dunn, Best Buy’s head of environmental sustainability. “We look forward to working together with other members of The Climate Pledge to accelerate change and create a more sustainable future for generations to come.”