At Salvation Army Thrift Stores, we take our impact on the environment seriously and have adopted several strategies towards positive results.

Reusable Shopping Bags

Reusable shopping bags are becoming the norm throughout much of Canada and also at the Salvation Army Thrift Stores. The Salvation Army Thrift Stores offer reusable shopping bags in many outlets throughout the country and this program is expanding. In other areas, we have begun to charge 5 cents per bag in order to encourage shoppers to bring their own bags to our stores.

Plastic bags’ leaving our Thrift Stores is only a small portion of the story, a vast majority of the clothing and household donations we receive are made in either plastic bags or cardboard boxes. The Salvation Army bales this massive amount of plastic bags and cardboard and sells it to recyclers increasing the funds returned to the charity, reducing garbage costs and helping our environment by keeping these materials from landfills.

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment

On April 1 2009, selected Salvation Army locations in Ontario began participating in a program operated by the Ontario Electronic Stewardship (OES) and Waste Diversion Ontario (WDO) and became an approved collector of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment or WEEE for short. This program allows the public to drop off their unwanted monitors, computers, mice, keyboards, printers, and TV’s at selected Salvation Army Stores in Ontario. These materials will be recycled domestically in an environmentally friendly manner by recyclers that have been screened and approved by WDO.

The Salvation Army’s involvement in the creation and participation in this program was by no means a fluke. The Salvation Army was a pioneering participant in a similar program in British Columbia. When OES and WDO began creating the Ontario program the Salvation Army was front and center in the consulting phase and as one of the first approved collection sites. Since to programs start we have recycled more then 12 tractor trailer loads of WEEE, that’s and average of 2 tractor trailer loads per week.

For more information on the recycling of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment and links to the WEEE program website please visit www.tstores.ca

Trucks

Automobiles represent one of the largest contributors to our carbon footprint. The Salvation Army has made a commitment to reduce the impact of our carbon footprint; a monumental task when you consider our mission is helping those at risk in society. It is often hard to balance the environment against the human condition.

Nonetheless, we have reduced our carbon footprint by reducing the size of our truck fleet, retiring older vehicles with higher emission rates, purchasing new vehicles using cleaner utilizing low sulfur diesel engines and using GPS tracking to assist in monitoring vehicle movements and route planning. Thereby improving efficiency and reducing the amount of traveling the remaining vehicles are doing. This has resulted in significant reductions in our overall fuel consumption.