GameStop’s Sustainability Program

Amanda Whitley, Senior Buyer, Sustainability for GameStop met with ENGIE Impact to discuss the company’s current energy management strategy and related sustainability programs.

Transcript has been edited for clarity

ENGIE Impact: What is GameStop’s energy sustainability strategy?

Amanda Whitley: Our energy and sustainability strategy is relatively new. We kicked off our sustainability program in 2016, and 2017 was all about laying the groundwork. This included getting people to buy into the fact that sustainability is important. I was very focused on attacking behavioral usage. I was a store manager before moving to corporate and I knew from personal experience that I was not always the most responsible with my energy usage. That was a big focus for 2017 and in 2018 we started buying renewable energy credits for the first time. We are doing LED rollouts and are looking at adding solar in the future.

ENGIE Impact: What do you see as the most promising innovation for energy management?

Amanda Whitley: I think that the most promising upcoming innovation in the energy space is the use of smart meters. As those start to proliferate and we get easier access to that data, it would provide all the insight to turn information into action. I think that is going to be huge in the future.

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ENGIE Impact: What is GameStop’s Power to the Planet Program?

Amanda Whitley: People do care about sustainability but when they come in to sell video games that’s not necessarily on the top of their mind. I wanted to make sustainability real to them, to make it matter. For those who are very passionate about sustainability, we said if they reduce their energy by a given amount, it would equate to planting a certain number of trees. That’s something that everyone can understand.

For people who are not as invested, we said if they reduce their energy by a given percent, that equates to selling more video games. It boiled down to finding the bucket of things that people cared about. It was not capital investments, it was simple things - when you leave your store, adjust the HBAC, turn your lights off. If we can get 55 hundred managers to care about these things and take them into their home, this can become not only a program for our stores but a general education of what we can do around sustainability.