5 Ways to Run a Sustainable Retail Store with Lightspeed

Sustainable retail business practices are likely to resonate with your current and potential customers. Gen Z and Millennials, in particular, are leading the charge; 62% of Gen Z prefer to shop with sustainable brands, and 73% of Millennials will pay more for sustainable goods. Switching to a more sustainable business model is good for the environment; letting your customers know about your sustainable model is good for your business. 

As you reopen your store to the public, you potentially draw in customers and pique their interest by being a forward-looking business that’s proactively tackling environmental concerns in your everyday operations.

Changing up your business model can be costly, but getting started with sustainable retail doesn’t have to mean making big, expensive changes right away. To implement sustainable practices in your store, just look to your point of sale.

5 ways you can be more sustainable with Lightspeed

Your Lightspeed point of sale system can help you tackle sustainability concerns in two primary areas: eco-friendly material usage and inventory waste. By incorporating these practices into your business, you can save money and reassure customers that they’re making an eco-concious choice when they patronize your store.

1. Go for paperless receipts

When it comes to environmental impact, paper receipts are killer. 93% of paper receipts were found to contain BPA or BPS in a 2018 study⁠—two chemicals that you probably don’t want around in high concentrations. And even receipts not coated in BPA or BPS are a problem; 21 billion gallons of water and 10 million trees are used to make paper receipts every year in the United States, creating 686 million pounds of waste.

Encouraging an alternative to paper receipts isn’t just good for the environment⁠—it’s more convenient for your customers, too. If they ever need to consult their receipt to communicate with your or for their own bookkeeping, they just need to do a quick search in their email inbox.

2. Encourage in-store and curbside pickup

So you’ve been selling online⁠—and perhaps you’ve noticed all those boxes and all that packing material can really start to add up. To make your eCommerce packaging more sustainable, you can start investing in recycled materials and cut down on any plastic or styrofoam you’re using. You can also encourage local online shoppers to pick up their goods, cutting out the need for any extra packaging altogether.

If you’re not ready to open your business up to in-store pickup just yet, or your customers aren’t quite ready to start coming in-store, you can still offer curbside pickup as an option. Advertise this method as a way to get their goods quickly while still benefitting from the convenience and safety of shopping online on your social channels.

3. Recycle used gift cards 

Gift cards are often made of PVC plastic, which is particularly hard to recycle. In 2014, 10,000 tonnes of PVC waste in the United States were directly attributed to plastic gift cards. Retailers looking to be more sustainable should take a critical eye to how they use and sell gift cards.

You can cut down on how many new plastic gift cards you need to order and, as such, how many new plastic gift cards need to be printed, by recycling and reactivating used gift cards. 

4. Consistently keep track of inventory levels

Ordering inventory you don’t need doesn’t just create extra waste—it can impact your profits as well. By knowing exactly how much you have on hand, you can be environmentally and economically conscious at the same time.

Full inventory counts help you check up on your stock levels, but they’re time-consuming—prohibitively so. Doing regular cycle counts⁠—where you only count a portion of your inventory⁠—will help you keep on top of your inventory with accurate data without needing to do a full count of your store every single time.

5. Optimize purchase orders using sales data 

To further cut down on inventory waste, you can ensure you’re only ordering new inventory when you absolutely need it. This way, you can ensure you’re only keeping what you need on hand⁠—which is, again, good for both your profits and the environment.

Lightspeed helps retailers keep track of when they need to reorder without over-ordering by letting you set customer reorder points. To know the ideal reorder point for an item, you’ll need to know how fast items typically sell and how quickly, on average, it takes for new orders to arrive. From there, you can pick your reorder point and your desired inventory level.

Let’s say you have an item that usually sells about 5 units every 2 weeks (or 10 units in a month), and it takes 2 weeks for a new shipment to arrive. You aim to reorder this product once a month. Your desired inventory level would be 15 units, and your reorder point would be 5 units. In the middle of each month, you’d run the reorder point report in your Lightspeed POS, which would tell you how many you need to order to have enough to not be out of stock or grossly overstocked at the start of the next month⁠—in 2 weeks, after the shipment arrives. If you find you consistently have too much or too little on hand, adjust the desired inventory level and reorder points as needed. The goal should be to always have on hand exactly what you need so you’re not contributing to excess waste during manufacturing or shipping.

Look to the future with sustainable retail

Sustainable retail practices benefit everyone. They’re better for the environment, good for your customers and beneficial for your business. Concerns about sustainability aren’t going to go away, so getting started now prepares you to meet increasing consumer attention to sustainability in the future.

Many of these practices can help you be smarter with your costs and margins, and they don’t cost any extra to implement—particularly helpful as you reopen your business to the public.