Texan by Nature is excited to recognize H-E-B as a 2024 TxN 20 honoree for their leadership in conservation and sustainability. H-E-B’s commitment to conservation, their projects, programs, best practices, and lessons learned are an example and inspiration for us all.

Honoree Industry and Size: Food, Beverage, and Grocery – Enterprise

Company Overview
A company born and raised in Texas since 1905, H-E-B operates more than 435 stores across Texas and Mexico, with sales totaling $43 billion in 2023. More than a grocery store, H-E-B is known for its leadership role in its communities, as well as its innovative, entrepreneurial spirit. Fresh food, quality products, low prices, convenient services, and a commitment to the people and places of Texas are just a few reasons why H-E-B is a beloved member of the Texas community and has been ranked the top grocery retailer in the country 3 out of the last 4 years by renowned research firm, Dunnhumby.

What is H-E-B’s conservation and sustainability mission and why is it important to your culture?
One thing every Texan has in common is our love for this state. And as Texans ourselves at H-E-B, we couldn’t agree more. That’s why we’re committed to ensuring that our state is just as great 100 years from now as it is today through H-E-B’s sustainability commitment: Our Texas, Our Future. This is a promise to our customers that we will help preserve Texas’s natural resources through how we source products and what we carry, how we manage surplus food and recycling efforts, and how we run our fleet and invest in renewable energy. This mission is important to us because it is important to all Texans, and we know that, collectively, we can have a positive impact and protect our treasured Texas land, water, and air for future generations, together.

What steps is H-E-B taking to address global natural resource challenges, and how are these efforts integrated into your overall business strategy?
We operate our business in a way that contemplates sustainability now and for decades to come, for the health of our operations and of the Texas ecosystem we are inextricably linked to. We firmly believe sustainable business practices serve the well-being of the environment and the well-being of our business. That is why we consider Texas’s land, air, and water in our stores, manufacturing plants, warehouses, and throughout our supply chain.

Our energy portfolio is increasingly leaning into renewables, both to reduce our impact and strengthen our resiliency. To that end, our goal is to derive 50% of our power from renewable energy sources by 2025. Additionally, we voluntarily participate in load shedding every summer to reduce our use of electricity and alleviate stress on our state’s grid. Our building design team has a checklist with dozens of sustainability features that enhance the efficiency of every facility we design, from air quality technologies that reduce energy usage based on building occupancy, to exploring lower-impact cooling technologies like chilled water storage.

Our transportation fleet is constantly evaluating opportunities to reduce the resources they consume, whether in the form of new vehicle technologies like EVs, new fuel sources like biofuels, or smarter logistics that create more efficient routing and scheduling.

As we continue to expand, bringing H-E-B to communities in North Texas, the Houston metroplex, and more, we aim to make a big splash but leave a light footprint. Our store design team does extensive work to assess every site we develop, aiming to preserve local trees and plants and, where that may not be possible, help to plant new native trees in nearby neighborhoods that need them most through H-E-B Trees for Texans (in partnership with Texan by Nature!).

We are also taking steps to ensure our vendors, suppliers, and other business partners are along for our journey because we know we can go farther together. Our teams are increasingly engaging our suppliers to learn about the efforts they are making to reduce their impact, and how we can join forces to amplify our collective efforts. This kind of collaborative mindset—both internally and externally—is central to our sustainability strategy.

Solar panels on the roof of H-E-B’s San Marcos store.

Who at H-E-B is leading your conservation and sustainability efforts and what are some examples of employee engagement in conservation and sustainability at your company?
Sustainability is a key priority for H-E-B and one that aligns with the heart of our identity as a purpose-driven company. Led by Yun Au, General Counsel of H-E-B; Winell Herron, Group Vice President of H-E-B Public Affairs, Diversity and Environmental Affairs; and Leslie Sweet, Managing Director of Sustainability & Environmental Affairs, sustainability has not only the endorsement of our senior-most leaders but also a growing list of ways for employees to engage with and advocate for sustainability initiatives from the ground-up.

Just as we strive to increase access to sustainability for our customers, we have created a variety of internal programs like our Partner Nature Perks summer series, which offers a multitude of outdoor and educational events aimed at making it easy and fun for H-E-B employees and their families to enjoy the special spaces and species of Texas. 

We also support employees’ passion for environmental conservation in their local communities. For example, 2 years ago, our Huntsville store team initiated a volunteering collaboration with Get Outside Alliance at Huntsville State Park to conduct cleanups and restore park amenities after floodings in the area. 

Additionally, since 2012, our Environmental Affairs team has supported community environmental stewardship by partnering with over 500 environmental Texan nonprofits. These efforts include land, water, air, wildlife, and pollinator habitat protection, volunteering at trash cleanups, and creating partnerships with nonprofits to lead statewide initiatives, such as H-E-B Trees for Texans (with Texan by Nature) and leading H-E-B Recycling for Texans  (with Keep Texas Beautiful).

Of course, none of this would be possible without a consistent drumbeat of sustainability messaging for our employees throughout the year. Our internal communications team ensures sustainability-related articles and engagement opportunities come at a regular cadence across company channels to keep sustainability top-of-mind for all employees. For example, this past April, we kicked off Earth Month Bingo, in which employees were encouraged to participate in various sustainable activities such as starting a compost bin at home or returning plastic bags to our front-of-store bins throughout the month. Once they got “bingo,” they were eligible for prizes like a Texas State Parks pass!

H-E-B Partners plant trees at a school in Georgetown, Texas.

What conservation and sustainability programs and projects does H-E-B lead and participate in?
As a trusted leader in Texas, H-E-B feels a responsibility and a privilege to champion sustainability within our company and across our state.

Established in 2021, H-E-B Recycling for Texans aims to improve recycling access and education in the communities we serve. Together with Keep Texas Beautiful and its program, Keep Texas Recycling, we work year-round with local organizations that share our mission to increase recycling access, particularly in rural and underserved communities. Keep Texas Recycling then provides critical technical assistance, access, and education on best recycling practices. Thus far, H-E-B’s commitment to Our Texas, Our Future has awarded over $400,000 in Recycling for Texans grants to Keep Texas Beautiful, helping to provide new and/or improved access for 400,000 residents in 9 communities, two of which did not have access to recycling prior. 

Each spring, we look forward to kicking off our H-E-B School Bag Recycling contest, in which our stores engage with local schools to collect and recycle as many plastic bags (and other flexible plastic films) as possible. In 2024, we were thrilled to have 675 schools participate across the state during the month-long event, ultimately collecting over 5 million bags. These bags were then taken to our facilities to be recycled, and—like all soft plastics returned to the recycling bins placed at every one of our stores—turned into new materials such as Trex plastic decking. 

We focus on recycling in our operations, too, by ensuring as much material that can be recycled, is recycled—or reused. For example, a single chip box can be reused up to 9 times to ship H-E-B brand chips from our manufacturing plants (where we make items like our H-E-B branded tortilla and potato chips right here in Texas!) to our stores and back again before it ultimately gets recycled. In 2023, we recycled 585 million pounds of materials like cardboard, paper, plastic, and tires. 

Similarly, food recovery efforts are a significant focus for us as a food-first retailer. H-E-B was a pioneer for grocery retail perishable rescue in 1989, writing a playbook that was later picked up by Feeding America and others to institute in their own operations! Today, we work closely with Feeding America to donate our wholesome surplus food, as well as organics recycling partners who help preserve the rich nutritional value of the food we procure by turning it into animal feed, compost, and more.

Additionally, our Sustainable Packaging Committee is a highly cross-functional group focused on our H-E-B family of brands with representation across our Merchant teams, Supplier Engagement, Manufacturing, Customer Insights, and more. Together they seek opportunities to make H-E-B products more recyclable, reusable, or compostable across our portfolio of H-E-B products. Our in-store packaging team endeavors to reduce the impact of plastics and paper used in our daily store operations. A significant outcome of this work includes offering our customers options for paperless prescriptions at their local H-E-B pharmacy, saving over 100 million sheets of paper annually.

What strategies does H-E-B use to educate and raise awareness among employees, customers, and stakeholders about the importance of conservation and sustainability?
H-E-B believes in increasing access to nature for all Texans, and inviting our employees, customers, and communities along on our journey to protect and preserve Our Texas, Our Future by bringing the natural beauty of Texas to life. 

To that end, in 2023 we debuted an original 5-part docuseries showcasing the beauty of Texas’s natural resources and the remarkable work so many Texas farmers, ranchers, researchers, and environmentalists do every day to take good care of our land, water, and air. Illustrating the unique flora and fauna of our state, the short films aim to inspire viewers to explore and conserve the Texas beauty in their own backyards. With nearly 20 screenings at local venues across the state (and counting!), the short films continue to reach new audiences and bring our communities together in their shared interest in the health of our natural surroundings. The films are available on YouTube, our website, as well as through PBS and their LearningMedia site, where teachers can access not only the films, but also accompanying TEKS-aligned curriculum to bring conservation into their classrooms for free (suitable for children grades 6-12). 

More generally, the Our Texas, Our Future website acts as a repository for many of our sustainability initiatives—a place where anyone can go to learn about what steps are being taken at their local H-E-B and behind the scenes to lighten our impact. For example, details about sustainable packaging efforts, waste diversion, and, most recently, our Texas Local campaign can be found on the site. Notably, this Texas Local campaign utilized a variety of platforms to educate our audiences, ranging from traditional channels like TV to innovative virtual portals on Facebook and Instagram that transport viewers into our local suppliers’ spaces, like a tomato grow house in Marfa. H-E-B Newsroom helps to echo and amplify these stories in media, and our communications teams collaborate extensively to ensure alignment across internal and external messaging. Customers may have noticed the Our Texas, Our Future logo on refreshed signage in and around their stores, starting with parking lot signs reminding them to bring their reusable bags, continuing on our refreshed front-of-store plastic bag recycling bins, and carrying over to the plastic bags themselves.

We believe our employees are critical to the success of our commitment to Our Texas, Our Future. As such, we strive to ensure they feel aware of and welcome to our sustainability events, such as the first-ever Our Texas, Our Future festival held at the beautiful Waterloo Greenway this past spring, where over 1,500 people gathered to watch our films and enjoy a variety of conservation-themed activities. As previously mentioned, every summer, we offer Partner Nature Perks, a series that offers a variety of nature-oriented events aimed at making it easy and fun for H-E-B employees to enjoy the Texas landscape. Along the same vein, H-E-B is proud to offer complimentary access to its 2 recreational lodges nestled in the Texas Hill Country and on the coastal shores, which are available to our employees free of charge year-round. In 2023, we hosted nearly 1,000 reservations throughout the year!

Our impact is the result of the actions of over 150,000 employees every day, which is why we are building a strategic communications architecture to answer their call for even more insight into our sustainability efforts. As a key strategic priority, sustainability is featured in our annual Leadership Meeting, where thousands of H-E-B leaders congregate to hear about and discuss the company’s most important initiatives; the Our Texas, Our Future commitment and work streams have been woven into onboarding programs, with more integration coming; our sustainability mission and progress are shared at a regular cadence on our internal employee intranet; and we utilize all communications channels to meet our employees where they are, whether it be email, Slack, Teams, or text. But there’s always more we can do, and we look forward to increasing our employee engagement in the years to come.

Texas is a treasure, and for H-E-B, it’s home. We have a deep love for this great state, and it’s our mission to enrich the lives of all Texans and do what’s best for our communities by acting today with the future of Texas in mind. Through the Our Texas, Our Future commitment, we’re focused on reducing our footprint while increasing awareness, access, and education around sustainability efforts that help preserve land, water, and air in Texas. We’re honored to support and work alongside like-minded companies and organizations that share our passion to help protect, conserve, and beautify this place we call home.”

– Leslie Sweet, Managing Director of Sustainability & Environmental Affairs, H-E-B

H-E-B gave away 265,000 reusable bags on Earth Day 2024.

Can you share specific examples of successful partnerships or innovative collaborations H-E-B has formed with other organizations to enhance sustainability and conservation outcomes?
Rescuing surplus, wholesome, healthy food aligns with our core mission as a company—to feed Texans and their families. Feeding America helps us live into that mission by immediately delivering our surplus to Texans who need it most. Over the years, Feeding America and their Texas affiliates have helped us donate hundreds of millions of pounds of high-quality food to Texans in need, thereby serving our communities and our environment by keeping good food where it should be: on our plates. Just last year, in 2023, we donated 32 million pounds of food, the equivalent of more than 26 million meals, to 21 food banks and agencies across the state. 

Our Merchant teams have also worked closely with strategic suppliers to bring sustainably-minded H-E-B brand offerings to shelf. For instance, in 2022, we launched a new brand of clean and green household, personal, and baby care products called Field & Future by H-E-B. Now totaling over 120 products, the line offers unique items like our Field & Future trash bags, which are made using recycled plastic from our own H-E-B operations. The Field & Future brand also gives back to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Foundation, most recently donating over $338,000 to support building a new state park in North Texas, conserving habitats along the coast, and bringing black bears back to Texas! So, just by buying trash bags, customers can make a difference! 

We also have local suppliers to thank for our new line of greenhouse-grown lettuces, H-E-B Kindly Cultivated. By growing these lettuces indoors in a controlled environment, they use 90% less water; and because they’re grown here in Texas, they not only support Texas farmers, but they also travel fewer miles to our stores.

How does H-E-B quantify investment and return on conservation and sustainability?
Since 1905, H-E-B has operated as a lean retailer committed to offering our customers the best products at the best value. We strive to run our business efficiently, both by reducing waste and implementing innovative tools and technologies in strategic ways to help us do more with less. 

Sustainability provides a productive frame through which to consider this longstanding commitment. For example, we have invested significantly in the Texas sunshine through industrial-scale solar farms and solar panels on 62 of our stores and 5 other facilities, an investment that both improves the resiliency of our facilities and increases our use of renewable energy. On a sunny day, our store rooftop solar system can contribute as much as 50% of the power needed during peak demand hours.

Advancements in transportation technology and implementation of best practices (like running engines at lower RPMs at road speeds) have allowed H-E-B to improve fleet fuel economy by 14% in the past 5 years and a corresponding reduction of 830,000 gallons of diesel fuel—and its accompanying cost—each year. H-E-B is a charter member of the EPA’s SmartWay program, established in 2004.  

And many packaging improvements that have enhanced recyclability, reduced virgin plastic, or both, have delivered cost savings to the company.

At their internal sorting facility, an H-E-B Partner(employee) inspects a milk jug ready to be recycled.

What is the one lesson that H-E-B has learned from your conservation and sustainability efforts that others can take back and think about applying within their own space?

At H-E-B, we take our leadership role in our home state seriously, which is why we take a deliberate, tailored approach to our sustainability and conservation work. We believe every step we take and investment we make should ultimately make an impact—direct or indirect—on the communities we serve.

H-E-B has a robust internal insights team, whose sole purpose is to keep a pulse on the needs, wants, and feelings of our customers and employees. Over the past several years, our sustainability teams have leveraged our insights center to inform our path forward, to ensure that as we take cues from our industry peers, and we tailor our approach to benefit the people and places of Texas.

Over the past several years and in countless surveys, focus groups, and interviews, one lesson has been clear: sustainability is at its best when it’s tangible, accessible, and relevant.

To make it tangible, we must provide the products, tools, and technologies that make sustainable practices possible, at work, at home, and beyond. 

To make it accessible, we must lower the barriers to enjoying our natural resources, so all Texans feel a connection to the land, air, and water we aim to protect.

To make it relevant, we must explain the “why” behind our choices, and make them pertinent to our day-to-day.

We are actively working to bring these lessons to fruition by making investments in products and tools designed specifically for our end users, in partnerships that increase access to the Texas landscape, and in storytelling—like our 5-part docuseries—that imparts a sense of place and purpose to our sustainability goals.

Why is Texas an important home or base of operations for H-E-B?
Founded in 1905 and built on a $60 investment, H-E-B began as a small family grocery store in the Hill Country town of Kerrville, Texas. Today, H-E-B is one of the nation’s largest independently-owned food retailers dedicated to exceptional customer service, low prices, top-quality products, and convenient shopping options such as Curbside pickup and Home Delivery.

More than a retailer, H-E-B is deeply committed to our customers beyond our stores through passionate public service in the more than 300 communities we serve. Known as the H-E-B Spirit of Giving, the tradition can be traced to the company’s earliest days when H-E-B founder Florence Butt and her youngest son, Howard, took food baskets to the homeless that lived along the banks of the Guadalupe River. Our Spirit of Giving remains steadfast and is a key part of everyday business at H-E-B. Each year, H-E-B donates five percent of pre-tax annual earnings to charitable organizations focused on hunger relief, education, health, military, environmental sustainability, and diversity and inclusion initiatives. 

Find out more about H-E-B’s conservation and sustainability efforts here.