Sustainability Initiatives: Waste Reduction Efforts

At Maggie Sottero, we are working to create a more sustainable future for the next generation and beyond, including our focus on waste reduction efforts. We are on a mission to learn best practices and reduce our environmental impact. We stand for LOVE and love for ALL–including Mother Earth! To get in on the love, make sure to follow our social media channels below to keep up with the positive impacts we are making towards the future!

What Has Maggie Sottero Been Up To?

Maggie Sottero has been making positive impacts in the world through our inclusivity efforts, social responsibility, and environmental consciousness. We have promised to create beautiful and inclusive experiences for all of our brides, expand into our global community through charitable actions, and disrupt the standard to create a more sustainable wedding space. 

We’re reimagining everything we do with a regenerative, future-facing view.  The Maggie family is committed to being the change, disrupting the standard, and creating the future to ensure our brides’ love stories—and our Planet— endure.

We’re focusing on three key areas of impact: Waste reduction, resource consumption and protecting biodiversity.  We’re so excited to share more about this work. First up? Our efforts towards waste reduction!

What is Waste Reduction?

Maggie Sottero is recycling everything possible, as efficiently as we can, from bulk shipping waste to diverting stock from landfills. We are working towards ZERO waste.

This move towards zero waste is not without a great amount of dedication and heart and challenges along the way, however. Every day, our Maggie family is committed to walking the talk to create a more sustainable wedding space for our brides! From reducing single-use plastic in our offices to donating excess stock, waste reduction is an important step in our sustainability efforts.

Helping lead this effort is our Warehouse Assistant Manager, Tyler Bolen. He’s working to execute waste reduction strategies and practices that not only lower our environmental footprint but also foster a culture of responsibility and awareness. With Tyler and the warehouse team’s help, our waste reduction efforts are staying on track even as guidelines and processes continue to evolve. 

What are the responsibilities you and your team have had as we work to expand our waste reduction practices?

Here in the warehouse, we have started implementing some great waste reduction efforts. On a small scale, we’ve added signage to the trash and recycling receptacles to ensure it is clear our team knows what they can and can’t recycle. On a larger scale, we now separate all bulk plastic waste that is created from the large volume shipments we get. After being made aware that not all plastic can be easily recycled by the normal waste management we were using, we now are partnering with recycling companies that verify the certain types of plastics we give them will end up getting recycled or downcycled in a more environmentally-responsible manner. This is one of the biggest impacts we are making towards having a more sustainable practice. We are now preventing literal tons of plastics from being taken to the landfill by the previous waste management program we were using, which couldn’t process them as recyclables. 

Another positive impact we are making is with our retired gowns.  As we have various programs like our gown loan program for our retailers, we’ll have dresses and accessories that don’t end up with brides.  We are now finding new ways to retire these gowns, such as donating them to design schools; this gives future fashion professionals more opportunities to learn from what our fantastic designers here have accomplished. It’s programs like this that help keep our high standards of what our customers expect of Maggie, and we are excited to keep on finding new ways we can be a forerunner in our industry.

Lastly, we are now turning to using lower-impact shipping supplies. Previously we were using shipping boxes that were considered recyclable, but were being created from new resources.  We are now finding ways we can switch to using post-consumer recycled material for our shipping needs, but that won’t compromise our product in the process of being shipped.  This one has definitely been more of a challenge as we are finding that not everything works out as we have hoped, but that doesn’t mean we are giving up in our efforts to use as many sustainable products as possible when it comes to this area.

What has been your and your team’s experience so far with the new recycling initiatives Maggie Sottero has implemented in the warehouse?

Like everything, implementing new policies and procedures comes with its challenges, within things like training and finding out what is practical. We have found, though, that our team here is excited to take on this challenge and they are giving it their all to help Maggie achieve our goals in our new sustainability initiative. Sorting through tons of plastic has been no easy task but we are smoothing out the kinks to this process and we are now finding it very easy to deal with such high bulk waste that is now being prevented from going to the landfill.

What are some future initiatives that our brides can look forward to as part of Maggie Sottero’s waste reduction focus?

No new process comes without its challenges. The ideas and new tactics we try don’t always work out as we would have hoped but that doesn’t mean the problem isn’t impossible to solve, it just needs new creative tweaking to get where we can meet our sustainable goals.  Future Maggie brides can be confident though that our team here is going to give them a high-end product that they can not only cherish as the immaculate gown of their dreams but they can carry that confidence in knowing that Maggie isn’t compromising what else is important to our Maggie brides. We take pride in knowing that we are the maker of these forever cherished keepsakes that take all aspects of what’s important to our consumers truly to heart.

Correlating with our work in the warehouse, we have developed other waste reduction and recycling initiatives that we are excited to share with the world! 

Maggie Sottero’s Waste Reduction Efforts

We have taken many steps at Maggie Sottero to ramp up our waste reduction and recycling processes!:

• We have recycled 2000 lbs (and counting) of plastic shipping waste through our partnership with Rocky Mountain Recycling.
• 100% of our excess stock is diverted from landfills and into textile recycling programs and donation efforts.
• In office and at our marketing events, we have eliminated single-use plastics, replacing them with reusable dishware and utensils.
• We are recycling as much as we can, as efficiently as we can at our Scope 1 facilities in an effort to further reduce our municipal waste landfill impact.
• As part of our waste reduction efforts, we are dedicated to electronic waste reduction. Maggie has a long-standing practice of recycling used printer toners and donating decommissioned equipment to e-waste programs.
• At our markets, we have made a 70% reduction in printed material waste and included accessible QR codes in our marketing materials.

In addition to our dedicated waste reduction and recycling efforts, we’re taking creative approaches to wedding dress donations, aligning with our commitment to making a meaningful difference in the industry! We love our partnerships with OTIS College of Art & Design and Liverpool School of Art and Design, as well as Brides Across America! Keep reading to learn more about each of these unique partnerships.

Wedding Dress Donations

As part of our sustainability initiatives, we’re excited about our collaborative partnerships with community organizations and design school students in the U.S. and the U.K. to support the designers of the future while simultaneously reimagining our excess stock gowns. As we continue to innovate with design students, make sure to keep in touch with us so that you can see the amazing things yet to come! 

Partnership with Brides Across America

We’re also excited about our partnership with Brides Across America, a community organization that provides free dresses to qualified military, first responders, and healthcare workers. We’ve donated 300+ gowns to this incredible organization,providing designer gowns to our Heroes while also giving new life to our discontinued gowns.

Waste reduction is just one area of impact that we’re focused on as we implement sustainability at Maggie Sottero. This is challenging work, reflecting our collective determination to create a more sustainable wedding space for our Maggie brides. Our fortitude is in our people, our planet, and our hope for the future. To learn more about our efforts to create positive impacts, make sure to check out the Our Heart page by clicking the button below and keep up with us to learn about all our sustainability initiatives!

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