This past year challenged us all in ways we could not have anticipated, but that only pushed us at Best Buy to focus even more on helping our planet, employees and communities.
Today we released our annual environmental, social and governance (ESG) report. It highlights our efforts to deliver on our purpose to enrich lives through technology and how we’re working together across the company to have a positive impact on the world. From making Juneteenth a paid company holiday to investing in renewable energy, the report dives into our story over the past year.
Here are just a few examples of how that work has come to life.
Creating a more sustainable planet, together
Making a positive impact on our planet and the communities we serve has always been incredibly important to us. This year, we reached our goal to reduce carbon emissions in our operations by 60%, which we set in 2017, through a number of sustainability programs that touch every part of our business.
But we’re not done yet. We’re on our way to reducing our carbon emissions by 75% by 2030 (over a 2009 baseline). We also signed the Climate Pledge and have made a commitment to be totally carbon neutral by 2040, a decade faster than our previous goal of 2050.
Committing to diversity, inclusion and community efforts
Following George Floyd’s murder, we said we would do better to address underrepresentation, technology inequities and create educational and career opportunities for those who need it most. Since then, we have made a series of commitments we want to achieve by 2025.
- In August, we announced we would hire more than 1,000 new employees to our technology team over the next two years. We also made a commitment that 30% of these new hires will be diverse — specifically Black, Latinx, Indigenous and women — because it’s incredibly important to us that our workforce better represents the communities around us.
- In December, we committed more than $44 million to our diversity, inclusion and community efforts. This includes a five-year plan to achieve a number of goals, like filling one out of three new non-hourly corporate positions with BIPOC employees, adding 16 scholarships for HBCU students, and increasing scholarship funding for Best Buy Teen Tech Center youth.
- Earlier this month, we committed to spending at least $1.2 billion with BIPOC and diverse businesses by 2025. This pledge will increase all forms of spending with BIPOC businesses from nearly every corner of the company — from how we bring goods and services to our stores to where and how we advertise. The goal is to create a stronger community of diverse suppliers and help increase BIPOC representation in the tech industry.
Opening 100 Teen Tech Centers
As part of the $44 million commitment we made last year, we announced our plans to build a network of 100 Best Buy Teen Tech Centers, serving 30,000 teens from disinvested communities nationwide each year. These Teen Tech Centers will support youth with tech access, training and mentorship to build a talent pipeline for the jobs of the future.
In May, we committed an additional $10 million specifically to create opportunities for youth in Los Angeles county. This includes creating up to 12 new Teen Tech Centers in the LA area by 2023. Best Buy currently has 35 Teen Tech Centers nationwide to help youth explore their interests in programming, film-making, music production, design and more.
On the path to zero waste
Waste reduction continues to play an important part in our efforts to decrease our company’s environmental footprint. By managing all our solid waste and recycling between October 2019 and September 2020, we have increased our waste diversion by 9%, bringing it up to 78%.
This year, we reached a major milestone when we announced that one of our supply chain facilities in Chino, California, earned Best Buy’s first TRUE certification for zero waste. This means that this facility diverted more than 99.67% of its solid waste from landfills. While we’re very excited about this accomplishment, we’re looking to expand our TRUE certification into more facilities in the future.
Click here to view our latest ESG report.