Commitment to Safer Chemical Management

The ODP Corporation and its subsidiaries are committed to acting as environmental stewards, supporting healthy communities, and assisting our customers in doing the same. As part of this stewardship, we support the responsible use of chemicals in compliance with all laws and regulations, and we continue to work toward reducing and eliminating chemicals of concern beyond those legal requirements. This commitment extends to all the products we sell, including private and other brands, the packaging for those products, and the manufacturing processes for those products. We continuously seek to phase out chemicals of concern and improve the general management of chemicals.

The ODP Corporation seeks to promote safer chemical management through transparency about the chemicals in the products we sell, reducing and eliminating chemicals of concern, and advancing safer alternative formulations in the products we sell and their packaging. In collaboration with our vendors and suppliers, The ODP Corporation strives to identify the presence of chemicals of concern in products and packaging and to support innovations that result in an orderly transition to safer alternatives.

To have the most widespread, positive impact on our customers, community, and company, we have a prioritized approach toward applying these standards throughout all products, beginning with our private brands. The ODP Corporation places a high level of importance on implementing these policies throughout the entire company, including corporate, retail, service and distribution aspects of the business. We are establishing quantifiable goals for reducing and eliminating chemicals of concern in the products we sell and their packaging, based on our Beyond Restricted Substances List (BRSL) which identifies chemicals that we restrict or limit. As specified in the list, the current BRSL restricts or limits per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAs), flame retardants (both halogenated and organophosphate), and essentially all known regulated phthalates. The BRSL also restricts specified antimicrobials and solvents. We intend to evaluate our BRSL each year to add additional chemicals identified in The ODP Corporation’s Priority Chemical List.

The ODP Corporation also encourages innovations to work toward safer alternatives to chemicals of concern and uses WERCSmart (WERCS) offered by UL Solutions (UL) to ensure the compliant sale, handling, transportation, and disposal of products supplied by our vendors. The ODP Corporation requires all vendors and suppliers to register any products containing chemicals, batteries, light bulbs/lamps, or electronic devices with circuit boards, with WERCS. WERCS assesses each registered product to support The ODP Corporation’s objectives.

Private brand products: 

For our private brand products, The ODP Corporation not only requires each product comply with state and federal chemical requirements, but we continuously seek out safer chemical formulations. Our BRSL is intended to help keep the focus of our efforts and those of our suppliers, towards the implementation of this policy to promote the use of safer chemicals. The BRSL identifies both specific chemicals and chemical classes that are priorities for safer alternatives innovation.

• We require our private brand suppliers to comply with chemical safety restrictions set forth in state and federal requirements, but we believe those requirements are a starting point, not an ending point. In addition to testing for restricted substances under all state and federal requirements, including California’s Safe Drinking Water & Toxic Enforcement Act, we continue to develop requirements that go beyond state and federal regulatory compliance, and our BRSL already shows certain areas where we impose chemical restrictions beyond those required by law.

• We have Private Brand Operating Guidelines, which include chemical testing requirements and increasingly rigorous standards. This ensures we are holding our brands to the highest standard and being transparent with our practices.

• Using our professional partners and internal team of quality assurance engineers, we work to ensure that our private brand vendors are complying with The ODP Corporation’s Quality Manual and safer chemical practices. For instance, we test for chemicals of concern in all new private brand products before acquiring them, and we continue testing those products for chemicals of concern biannually.

•We encourage our private and national brand suppliers to lead on sustainable chemistry by leveraging third party certifications that assess and recognize leadership in line with the principles of green chemistry and safer substitution. 

• We work with factories that produce our private brand products on improving their chemical management processes and emphasize to them the importance of taking precautions regarding responsible chemical use.

Relationships with our vendors, suppliers, and other partners:

To keep our commitment consistent throughout all aspects of our business, we coordinate with our vendors, suppliers, and other partners to emphasize the importance of adhering to our guiding principles. We work with suppliers to encourage the incorporation of sustainable chemistry principles in the design of the products we sell.  

• For potential hazardous materials, we utilize the WERCs system by UL to gather all necessary information to safely abide with applicable storage and transportation regulations. Our distribution and transportation teams work together and share the WERCs resource to gain greater awareness of our environmental impact within the industry and the actions we are taking to create a safer environment.

• By partnering with an industry leader in hazardous waste disposal, The ODP Corporation is reducing hazardous waste sent to landfills. Our retail and supply chain facilities are required to and equipped to store and dispose of hazardous waste within the regulatory time frames and utilize proper disposal methods.

Sustainability Through Office Depot’s GreenerOffice™ Program: 

We have taken our customers’ concerns into consideration when creating our environmental policies and want to support them with in their environmental priorities.

ODP Business Solutions’ Greener Purchasing Program is a six-step process that helps us transition customers to reach their greener purchasing goals. We have created a web portal dedicated to helping customers identify, evaluate, and purchase products that are environmentally friendly, including use of safer chemicals.

Through ODP Business Solutions’ GreenerOffice™ Program, we created icons for our greener product assortment to showcase the attributes that are important to us and our customers. These icons, along with third-party eco labels, assist our customers in making purchasing decisions that are safer for the environment. These icons fall into three areas of impact: Use of Safer Chemicals & Avoid Exposure; Save Energy & Avoid Emissions; and Save Resources & Avoid Waste. Along with our other businesses that are also wholly owned subsidiaries of The ODP Corporation, there are more than 19,000 products in our assortment with green attributes, and we are committed to decreasing the company’s environmental impact through waste diversion programs, greener packaging, transportation innovations, and product solutions that extend throughout the lifecycle. Because of this program, in 2023, 38% of customer purchases were greener products, and over 28% of company sales were products with third party ecolabels regarding environmental claims. 

Safer Chemicals in Cleaning Products:

The ODP Corporation is committed to reducing and providing alternatives to chemicals of concern in cleaning products we sell, including cleaning chemicals, hand soaps, hand sanitizers, and air fresheners. To promote public transparency, we provide  Safety Data Sheets for all cleaning products online with each product listing at www.officedepot.com. Almost all our private brand cleaning products are eco-conscious, meaning they have one or more meaningful eco-attribute or eco-label providing third-party certification for the environmental claims on the labels. Our private brand floor and glass cleaners are certified bio-based and bear the “Safer Choice” ecolabel showing the product meets U.S. EPA Safer Product Standards. All private brand cleaning products are sourced from a single supplier, which facilitates coordination and transparency regarding product requirements.

Safer Chemicals in Paper Products:

The ODP Corporation has been actively working for many years to reduce and eliminate chemicals of concern in paper products. As part of our continuous improvement in this area, we have succeeded in eliminating BPA from all thermal paper and have communicated to our suppliers of thermal paper that The ODP Corporation will only purchase thermal paper that is BPA-free. The ODP Corporation remains committed to evaluating thermal paper with the goal of offering thermal paper free of other phenolics of concerns, such as BPS, BPF, and BPC.

We are committed to sourcing, using and selling paper products that reduce our impact on the world’s forests. We published our first Environmental Paper Policy in 2004 and revised it in 2013. We then updated and replaced it in 2019 with our current Greener Purchasing Policy for Paper Products. This policy applies to 100% of office copy paper and marketing paper purchased or sold by The ODP Corporation.

We remain committed to using recycled fiber, supporting responsible forestry certification, increasing supply chain transparency, and growing markets for greener paper products. Our current Greener Purchasing Policy for Paper Products promotes our sustainability goals by helping avoid paper products from illegal sources, forests being actively converted to non-forest use, High Conservation Value forests (unless Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified or progressing to FSC), genetically modified or engineered trees, or forests where harvesting is documented to negatively impact human rights or labor rights.

Recycling program:

Through our E-waste, and Ink and Toner Cartridge Recycling Programs, we work with qualified electronics and toner recycling partners to reach our recycling goal of ensuring products and components are reused, recycled and/or disposed of properly and that chemical risks are managed responsibly. Sixty-seven percent of our waste was recycled in 2023, and along with our other businesses that are also wholly owned subsidiaries of The ODP Corporation, 56.6 million lbs. of waste were diverted from landfills. In 2023 The ODP Corporation recycled over 7.8 million pounds of ink and toner cartridges and more than 900k pounds of e-waste for customers.

Chemical Reduction Through Disposal of Potentially Hazardous Materials:

Potentially hazardous materials occur in our daily lives far more frequently than most people realize, and The ODP Corporation continues to work to reduce and eliminate chemicals of concern through proper disposal of products and materials containing such chemicals. Our employees are trained to recognize the following types of products and dispose of them through designated channels in our facilities, rather than in ordinary trash or down the drain:

Aerosols, Flammables, and Combustibles (acetone, isopropyl alcohol, etc.), Oxidizers (bleach, chlorine, etc.), Corrosive Acids and Bases (ammonia, etc.), State Regulated/Toxic Materials, Universal Waste – Types of products: Fluorescent Light Bulbs, Household Batteries, Small Electronic Devices: any item that contains a circuit board or uses AC power or batteries, TVs and Video Displays: including computers, monitors, laptop computers and other devices with video screens.

A systematic and transparent approach to responsible chemical management will result in the greatest value for our customers, communities, and company. We will continue to utilize our chemical management programs and policies to effectuate and sustain our continued commitment to responsible chemical management. We will continue to measure our progress and strive for strategic improvements to develop better options to achieve our goals.

Oversight:

Office Depot's Safer Chemicals Management Policy is overseen by its Office of Strategic Sourcing, and is implemented throughout all levels of the company, from corporate to retail.