Although we’ve always recycled at the store, it was on a trip with 35 other women in April when I had someone actually challenge me and ask “what does your business do to stay green?” Well, I’d never really thought about it before, and I realized that it was time to articulate it!
When you buy online from the Linen Gallery, your shipment, if sent from the store, is going to arrive in a used shipping box. We do not buy new boxes — we reuse old (and we hope you do to). That includes all the packaging material we receive from our vendors. When your order is not in stock, 75% of the time we will have our vendor drop ship it to you. This eliminates one more carbon footprint that would happen if it first shipped to us and then we shipped it to you. As our vendors have gotten better at drop shipping, we have even started giving our local Omaha customers the option to have items that are special ordered directly drop shipped to them, eliminating the need for them to get in their car to visit us again.
Where we once exclusively shipped UPS or Fed Ex Ground, we now ship more and more USPS Priority Mail. We think this is slightly more green since the mailman is already coming to your house everyday. (And, our customers get it much faster).
Within the store, we recycle all out plastic containers and cans.
We need to do more — we need to lobby our vendors to use more earth friendly packaging for their products and to consolidate shipments whenever possible. We need to use less paper at our store — we have way to much! We need to find an earth friendly laundry soap for linens to sell. And there is much, much more. We would appreciate any insights or suggestions you might be able to contribute to our new policy.
