Simon Malls’ Customer Returns Services Makes a Dent in Emissions

By 2025, buildings or developments of more than 35,000 square feet will have to use carbon emission caps.

The ordinance targets about 4 percent of the city’s structures—including commercial and residential buildings—that produce 60 percent of Boston’s building emissions.

Laura Schwartz, Regional Vice President of Leasing for Simon Property Group, said that from a leasing perspective, Simon is partnering with some of its biggest tenants to help them find ways to reduce their carbon footprint.

She cited the company’s Happy Returns program available in its malls, which provides immediate, in-person returns for items purchased at participating retailers.

With Happy Returns, shoppers can bring their items to Simon Guest Services, where a team will process the returns, initiate a refund, and handle return shipping—the service is free of charge.

Schwartz said that Simon hopes this initiative mitigates emissions caused by separate return efforts from individuals by streamlining the process and reducing the number of vehicles needed on the roads to complete those return efforts.

Simon Has EV Charging Stations at 62% of Its Properties

Aside from Happy Returns, Simon prioritizes several other methods of practicing sustainability, Schwartz said.

“The first effort is simple,” she said, “tracking carbon emissions through science-based targets. Simon also utilizes green building certifications.”

Simon Property Group owns 80 assets that are certified by these benchmarks.

“We are also working on making our properties more accessible to sustainable transportation methods by increasing the number of electric vehicle-charging stations at our centers,” she said.

To date, Simon has charging stations at 62% of its centers.

In 2019, Simon released a white paper discussing research conducted with Deloitte to investigate whether online shopping or malls produced greater emissions.

“We found that shopping malls represent a better sustainability performance over online shopping,” Schwartz said.

“Despite the demand at the time for quick delivery from online stores, Simon has welcomed previously exclusively e-commerce retailers to open physical locations in their stores in recent years, which we know will help reduce emissions produced from online shopping in that regard.”

Omni-Channel Strategy May Cut Emissions

This also indirectly plays to the trend of energy-saving, omni-channel operations.

Retailers are also using their stores as distribution centers, Schwartz said, reducing their operating costs significantly by positioning themselves closer to the customer.

“The ‘last mile’ it takes to fulfill an online, delivery order is the most expensive part of delivery, so instead of having these massive distribution centers in only three or four areas of the country, companies are using their brick-and-mortar locations to fulfill the inventory and provide a ‘buy online, pick up in store,’ which has been much more successful,” she said.

Simon Property Group’s assets are primarily in suburban markets.

“We have seen a huge shift in people’s activity in terms of working from home, staying closer to home, not wanting to travel as far for their goods and services, or where they work out,” said Schwartz, noting this also indirectly helps to cut emissions.

“It is a long-term strategy for Simon, to capitalize on our positioning of being in the suburbs and being able to provide those services in one location for all of our consumers.”