Q: Retailers are undergoing a lot of pressure to deliver on sustainability at scale, but executive teams can only gain traction by rigorously prioritizing what to do. So which sustainability opportunities do you see as being the top priorities for retail today?

Rajesh Garg (RG): My outlook is a mixture of what a brand should do—which includes materials sourcing, product design, and manufacturing—and what retail should do, which is warehousing and selling to the customer. Both parties need to be involved in the prioritization of opportunities and the biggest challenges to go after.

An important prerequisite is to understand your footprint, because you can't manage what you can't measure. A lot of companies have announced going neutral for Scope 1 and 2 [emissions from company-controlled sources and emissions from purchased sources like utilities], but that only addresses 10% to 15% of a company’s impact. At Landmark, we took a 360-degree approach, and we built a granular understanding of what's happening across emissions, water, and waste from all sources along the supply chain. We found that Scope 3 [indirect emissions throughout the company's value chain, including suppliers and product usage by customers] is 87% of our footprint, and more specifically, about 67% of the footprint is in the product, so product has been the big focus for us.

Q: How do you partner with your suppliers upstream to help deliver on sustainability commitments?

RG: Clearly, this is a long journey, so it starts with relationships. These aren’t possible with spot buys, but for our larger suppliers, it’s helping them understand that sustainable sourcing and manufacturing is the only way forward with us, and then taking them along for the ride.

Q: You've stated in the past that planet, protection, and profit can coexist. Could you share how Landmark is balancing financial performance with environmental responsibility?  

RG: I'm a big believer that dollars equals carbon. The more dollars you can remove from your costs, the more you can reduce your footprint, because in the end, it's all your input factors that contribute to your impact. Right now, there is a lot of waste and non-value added. Energy is the biggest starting point. We've started to transition to solar and renewable energies, which offer huge cost savings and reduce our footprint. There is also an excess of packaging used, so we’re reducing, recycling, and finding alternatives. We've got machines that convert used packaging into bubble wrap. So we're not buying new plastic bubble wrap, and we end up reusing cardboard that we were about to throw away. You have to go after your cost base.

Q: Are customers recognizing Landmark for these efforts, and is it helping to drive loyalty or sales?

RG: We’re growing when our competition isn't. Is that because of sustainability alone? No. It's the full suite: the product, the fashionability, the pricing. We feel we haven't done enough yet to educate people [on] how our value brands are more sustainable than many of the more expensive competitors. But we wanted to get our house in order before we talked a lot about it. The day when customers will pay a premium for greener products is yet to come, but eventually it will have a top-line impact. As a responsible brand, we also know there will come a time when a company won't be able to survive with unsustainable practices. As a leader, we have to begin that shift.

Q: What bold action should the industry take to accelerate progress as a community of retailers, rather than Landmark doing their own thing, and everyone else doing whatever they want?

RG: Strong industry bodies have a huge role to play. If the retail industry were to understand the impact they're having, from the products being sold and from their practices, and if they truly believe in reducing their impact, there is a lot that can be done. Because, yes, one of the biggest challenges is that there is no level playing field for someone like us who's investing a lot of time, money, and resources in sustainability. At the point of sale, either the customer is not aware, or he's saying, “My one trouser is not going to end the world, so I'm going to save 10 bucks.”

But if the whole industry and the municipalities and the government work together to say, “We’re going to move toward zero landfill, industry by industry, apparel, shoes, home,” which is what some of the other countries are doing, it then forces everybody to do what we are doing. We are doing it because it’s the right thing for the country and the planet. But when everybody is forced to do it, that's how it will change. Everybody will put in take-back programs or responsible end-of-life programs and start harnessing raw materials back. I mean, everything else is actually very tiny: “I'm not going to have straws, I'm not going to have plastic bottles.” Those are all fringe things. The biggest challenge is replacing the linear model with a circular one. That linear model, where you extract raw materials, convert them into finished products, and people use them for shorter and shorter periods of time before it all goes into a dump, that just won't survive. If you can have circularity, where raw materials are harnessed again, I think that's the biggest thing.

Q: Of all the technologies becoming available, which would you single out as having the most potential to help retailers operate more sustainably?

RG: Rather than technological breakthroughs in materials, it’s more about methods, practices, ideas. I'm a big believer in capitalism, so I'm not at all saying that people should stop buying products. But change the raw materials and change the manufacturing methods. The whole business model has to transform.

For retail specifically, it's two things. One is all the energy used for transportation inbound, outbound, and last mile. The electrification of that can have a big impact. And then I come back to my whole take-back thing. For grocery retail, it’s using reusable jars over disposable plastic, or products where you mix in the water at home. Every bottle of detergent is 80% water, and we’re transporting all of that. Both manufacturers and retailers have a huge role in this, because if retailers don't all agree to move to reusable jars, it won't work. That linear model of buying products in plastic bottles and disposing of them cannot last forever.