Office Depot and OfficeMax are nearly identical in size by market cap, but Office Depot has made a serious commitment to environmental sustainability and transparency whereas OfficeMax has not engaged on the topic.
Office Depot has an environmental strategy and looks at its environmental impacts all across its value chain–from sourcing almost 100% environmentally certified papers, to improving the carbon emissions and recycling in its facilities, to promoting environmentally sustainable products to its customers.
Office Depot is also very transparent about its impacts and footprint, reporting them publicly in a number of venues. Sustainability experts including the Newsweek Green Rankings and the Dow Jones Sustainability Index recognize Office Depot as a corporate environmental.
OfficeMax has made only cursory commitments to environmental responsibility. It has little transparency on environmental issues and no substantive environmental actions or policies. Recently, OfficeMax has started to make early strides including publishing a paper policy and disclosing its carbon footprint, but it still lags far behind Office Depot in terms of commitment, practices, and transparency.
Office Depot is overweighted in the fund whereas OfficeMax is underweighted.
The vast majority of Abacus clients own the DFA US Sustainability Core and/or International Sustainability Core funds. Both funds include environmental screening scores on over 4,000 companies tabulated by Sustainability Holdings in their allocation algorithms. Each quarter, this newsletter profiles one such company, and its positive or negative environmental behavior.
