Best Buy Plans for ‘Greener’ Fleet

RICHFIELD, MN - Best Buy Co. Inc. released its Annual Sustainability Report for Fiscal 2010, highlighting the company's environmental initiatives and progress made towards those goals. Efforts include reducing miles traveled, implementing an anti-idling policy, and right-sizing its fleet.

The following are just a few ways Best Buy is "going green":

Less travel. The company has managed to achieve its goal set in fiscal 2009 to have 100 percent of its long haul carriers in the SmartWay program, an initiative of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that helps transportation carriers and shippers improve their efficiency. Best Buy has been a partner with SmartWay since 2007 to help reduce the environmental impact of transportation in its operations. The company further leveraged SmartWay to develop partnerships with suppliers and third party shippers to reduce the number of miles traveled with an empty truck. In fiscal 2010, the company was honored by the EPA for excellence in this area, receiving the SmartWay Excellence Award 2009 in the Shipper category.

Idling reduction. The company set an internal goal to expand the "no idling" policy instituted in fiscal 2009 from all U.S. retail stores to all of our U.S. distribution centers. Best Buy has not fully met this goal, it has "made progress and plan[s] to continue working on making this policy feasible in each of [its] locations," according to the report.

Fuel efficiency. Best Buy plans to build a more fuel-efficient Geek Squad fleet. In fiscal 2010, the company experienced a slight reduction in miles traveled by the Geek Squad in-home services team, which is attributed to a more effective routing system. Best Buy is also testing the use of fully electric vehicles and has replaced many of its full-size cargo vans with smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles. In fiscal 2011, the company plans to invest in cargo vans that have smaller engines and to monitor technology solutions that may be able to help the company measure fleet usage more effectively.

Reducing emissions. In its U.S. operations, Best Buy became a partner in the U.S. EPA's Climate Leaders program. Climate Leaders is an industry government partnership that works with companies to develop comprehensive climate change strategies. Partner companies complete a corporate-wide inventory of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions based on a quality management system, set aggressive reduction goals and voluntarily submit annual reports to the EPA. Best Buy has already achieved its goal to reach an 8-percent carbon emissions reduction (per U.S. retail square foot over 2005 baseline) by 2012, and is working to establish a new goal to continue this trend.

Best Buy is ranked No. 69 on Automotive Fleet's 2010 Top 300 Commercial Fleets listing.

For the full sustainability report, click here.