Sears Canada Inc. has been named the 2013 ENERGY STAR Retailer of the Year by Natural Resources Canada. This is the 6(th) year in a row that Sears received this prestigious award from the Government of Canada for empowering customers to reduce their energy use, and the seventh time overall since the program launched in 2003. "Sears Canada is committed to making a broad selection of ENERGY STAR qualified products widely available, accessible and affordable to our customers," said Doug Campbell, President and CEO, Sears Canada. "Sears is proud to be recognized as a leader in promoting energy efficiency and helping Canadians choose products that will reduce their household environmental impacts and emissions." In 2007 Sears made a commitment to cut the Company's carbon footprint by 20% by the end of 2013 and 50% by 2020, with a mission to help customers do the same. In 2012 Sears exceeded the 20% reduction target more than a year ahead of schedule, by focusing efforts on bringing energy efficiency and avoidance of waste into daily retail operations.
Sears is on track to meet the aggressive 50% carbon reduction target by 2020 with a number of initiatives. These include the energy efficient LED lighting retrofit which began in 2011, using building automation and control systems and driving behavioural change through the Live Green at Sears program, comprised of an associate volunteer network of Green Captains. Also contributing to the 2020 carbon reduction target is the successful implementation of a company-wide paper optimization campaign. Sears offices now have fewer printers, print retention technology is utilized to avoid paper waste, the printing of hard copy business reports has been reduced to encourage the use of digitized versions and the number of Sears flyers printed for store use has been right-sized to reduce waste.
