I am a member of Costco Wholesale Club where I shop twice monthly.  The company has been referred to as the “testimony to ethical capitalism” due to the company’s practices and the treatment of its employees and suppliers, in which they are known to heavily invest in. Employees are empowered to problem solve daily without being micromanaged by their managers.

Costco values their people and has an established code of conduct that was put in place for the human rights and safety of the people who produce, process, and harvest the products they sell.

Child labor, slave labor, health and safety conditions and illegal prison labor are only a few specifications mentioned in their established code of conduct. One thing to highlight is that all prison labor must be paid at the States legal minimum wage versus the prison’s established minimum wages. One might ask why are they using prison labor in the first place? This is done to assist the incarcerated individual in their rehabilitation and repayment of their restitution.

Suppliers are encouraged to always work towards goals that goes above and beyond those put in place by the company.

Community service and volunteerism is very important to the organization and for this reason they have the Costco Employee Volunteer Reading Program which assists children in the warehouse’s local community with mastering reading. The program began in 1998 and now has over 2600 volunteers within 456 programs in the USA, Canada, and Australia. The local participation rate has now reached over 70 percent.

Their philanthropy and charitable programs focus mainly on local business communities and supports children, education, health, and human services. For local organizations and local causes the local warehouses are task with reviewing applications and typically awards for no more than ten percent of a program’s overall budget. Grant applications are considered for larger, broad-based organizations and causes. Of course, there are other qualifiers including being a registered non-profit organization.

Our planet is our home and Costco is very attuned of the fact that we are all individually and collectively responsible for her wellbeing, and how we treat her will determine how she treats us. The company has taken it up on themselves to research how they can effectively reduce their carbon footprint. They have found that 77 percent of electricity purchased goes directly towards refrigeration and HVAC in their warehouses and have begun work to implement new technology in refrigeration and HVAC that will reduce electrical usage and CO2 emissions. The company is committed over the next four years (2021-2024) to continue working on the progress they have already made and develop a formal Climate Action Plan aimed specifically at significantly reducing waste and creating a “holistic environment.”

For a company as global as Costco, sustainability is very important, and they have taken steps to ensure nothing is overlooked. They have categorized their sustainability program smaller categories. They are focused equally of the welfare and protection of their people both internal and external, just as much as they are focused on their goods and services. Their goal is to ensure their members are getting high quality products at the lowest possible price, show respect to all the people and animals who produce these products and shows respect to the way the products are handled and transported from the farm to the warehouse. No aspect of the process is left unaddressed both domestically and internationally.

As great as Costco is, there is still room for improvement. Costco does not offer a wide range of products, so the customer does not have a wide variety to choose from. There is also the fact that their target customer is not very wide as buying in bulk is not financially possible for many people. Shopping at Costco would be more beneficial if there was a variety on how items were packaged so that it would be more appealing to a wider range of people. There is also the fact that they do not have Warehouses in many communities and their delivery program is very minimal compared to their two major competitors Walmart, and Amazon. I believe that in order to remain competitive they will need to improve in the area or e-commerce and undertake a major expansion to make themselves more accessible to a wider section of the community.

Overall, I think that Costco’s positives far outweigh their negatives, and they will remain my choice of shopping for a very long time.

Sources: Google.com, Costco.com