citi trends mission
Citi Trends, Inc. cares about the environment and making improvements to the role we play in its preservation. We are at the beginning of this journey and are committed to being transparent in our progress in the months and years ahead. Our mission is to conserve natural resources and hold ourselves accountable for decreasing waste.
We are looking at all areas of our company to seek environmentally friendly options. We have grouped them into four focus areas:
- Distribution Centers and Transportation
- Offices and Stores
- Procurement
- Employees
We have established an Environmental Committee devoted to this task. For questions and suggestions, please contact them at sustainability@cititrends.com. We encourage all our stakeholders; associates, vendors, and customers to make a difference.
Distribution Centers
Distribution Centers
Our Distribution Centers in Roland, Oklahoma and Darlington, South Carolina continue to make progress in energy conservation, recycling, and reducing waste.
∙ Our Distribution Centers operate 20,000 feet of conveyer systems combined. We have equipped them to be “at rest” when not in use through use of smart reverse accumulation systems. More than half are also equipped with variable frequency drive systems, which are more energy efficient.
∙ In Roland, we continue to replace outdated lighting with LED energy efficient fixtures. Roland also uses occupancy sensors in low use areas.
∙ We only use electric powered, sealed battery equipment. We prohibit use of all gasoline and propane powered material handling devices.
∙ All corrugated carton shipped from vendors is recycled, along with all plastics used. We utilize recycled pallets, and all paper is made from 100%- recycled materials.
∙ Corrugated carton has been replaced with reusable totes to ship merchandise to more than 10% of our stores. These totes are returned to the DCs to be used again.
Transportation
Transportation
Transportation of goods to our distribution centers and to our stores, contributes to a large part of our carbon footprint. We have created several meaningful ways to minimize carbon emissions.
∙ In 2020, we enabled vendors to drop ship product directly to our stores for the first time. This dramatically decreased the miles the product traveled to our stores.
∙ We utilize consolidators to combine shipments and minimize the number of trucks in use.
∙ Rail is often used to ship goods from the West Coast, due to its lower levels of pollutants.
Stores
Stores
Our store teams continue to look for opportunities to reduce waste, conserve energy and increase recycling.
∙ Our shopping bags are made from recycled materials. We eliminated plastic bag use in 18 stores, replacing them with paper.
∙ We sold more than 140,000 reusable bags in 2020, reducing the number of plastic bags consumed.
∙ In 2021 we will begin offering customers the option of email receipts, significantly reducing our consumption of receipt paper.
∙ We are in the testing phase of an Energy Management System in 80 of our stores.
Products
Products
Citi Trends buying office is actively looking for ways to reduce waste from the products we buy. From the way the product is made, to the way it is packaged we are looking for improvement opportunities.
∙ As we expand our branded presence in stores, we are excited to partner with brands that share the same values, and are actively looking to minimize their environmental impact
∙ Merchants and vendor partners are working together to redesign packing to increase the amount of goods that are able to be cross docked through the DC, as well as drop shipped to stores. Both of these initiatives dramatically reduces energy used at the DCs.
Associates
Associates
We are looking to our associates in the distribution centers, stores and corporate offices to increase their recycling and reduce waste. We are launching a quarterly newsletter for our employees to create awareness and engage on the mission. With over 5,000 associates nationwide, small changes in daily behavior can go a long way
