Environmental Footprint

Our business is impacted by the health of our planet. We believe it is our responsibility to be good stewards of the natural resources that feed the power of possible throughout our value chain, each and every day. As a franchisor of the Domino’s brand, we are also aware of the environmental impact of our U.S. franchisee stores, which represent over 96% of our total U.S. store count.

Our responsibility is to help maintain our fair share of the planet’s health through the choices we make and the way we operate our business.

Therefore, we have outlined 3 focus areas through which we will seek to reduce our overall impact on the environment, contributing to a future in which our franchisees and consumers can thrive for generations to come. These 3 focus areas are climate, water, and waste.

We focus on these three areas of environmental impact through the lens of our core businesses – our supply chain centers where we make pizza dough and distribute other foodstuffs, our corporate-owned stores plus our World Resource Center corporate headquarters building – as well as our entire system, including our suppliers and franchisees.

CLIMATE

Domino’s corporate carbon footprint calculates greenhouse gas emissions across our value chain. This includes scope 1 emissions that we directly control in our operations, such as the fuel consumed by our fleet, scope 2 indirect emissions from the electricity, steam, heating or cooling we use, and scope 3 emissions that we indirectly influence through our business with suppliers, customers, and franchisees.

As our highest priority within our environmental footprint, we have committed to ambitious emissions reductions targets aligned with the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Domino’s ambitions for Net Zero and scope 1, scope 2, and scope 3 forests, land, and agriculture (FLAG) are aligned to limit global temperature rise by well below 1.5°C and scope 3 non-FLAG science-based targets are reduction targets that limit global temperature rise by well below 2°C. Domino’s Pizza, Inc commits to:

Reduce absolute scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions 50.4% by 2032 from a 2021 base year.
Reduce absolute scope 3 non-FLAG GHG emissions 30% by 2032 from a 2021 base year.
Reduce absolute Scope 3 FLAG GHG emissions 36.4% by 2032 from a 2021 base year.
Reduce absolute scope 1, 2, and 3 non-FLAG GHG emissions 90% by 2050 from a 2021 base year and reduce absolute scope 3 FLAG GHG emissions 72% by 2050 from a 2021 base year.

All inventory calculations were completed following the Greenhouse Gas Protocol using a custom tool developed for Domino’s business by our partners at Quantis. We use an operational control approach, and our scope boundaries cover, among other things, the following activities:

Scope 1: energy combusted on site from our U.S. and Canada supply chain centers, fuel used to transport product from our U.S. and Canada supply chain centers to our U.S. franchise and corporate-owned stores, energy combusted on site at our U.S. corporate-owned stores, fuel used to deliver product to consumers from our U.S. corporate-owned stores
Scope 2: purchased electricity at our U.S. and Canada supply chain centers, U.S. corporate-owned stores, and the World Resource Center
Scope 3:
- Non-FLAG: U.S. franchisee owned stores’ estimated utilities, waste from U.S. franchisee and corporate owned stores as well as supply chain centers and offices, corporate business travel, and employee commuting at supply chain centers and corporate headquarters
- FLAG: purchased food and fiber (pizza boxes) items

While awaiting final validation from SBTi, we continue to build out the approach for our decarbonization strategy. We are working cross-functionally throughout our organization to identify and refine actions we can take to further develop our pathway for meeting these targets. This work generally falls into two approaches.

OUR APPROACH TO DECARBONIZATION

APPROACH 1: EFFICIENCY, ELECTRIFICATION AND RENEWABLE ENERGY

Despite representing under 5% of our emissions, our scopes 1 & 2 activities are where we have the greatest amount of control. To reduce our emissions, we have developed a 3-part strategy on efficiency, electrification and renewable energy and are constantly exploring programs and projects aligned to these three key mechanisms.

Our efficiency work is focused on programs and projects we implement to reduce our overall usage of utilities. By using less, we can lower our emissions and our operational costs.

At select supply chain centers and corporate-owned stores, beginning in 2023 we are piloting energy management systems that will help identify where energy is being used and help us reduce overall usage by pointing out inefficiencies and automating temperature controls.
In 2022 and 2023, we invested in upgrades to the final 12 supply chain centers that had previously been using older lighting technology to LED lighting.

Our electrification work will focus on switching combustion processes to electric or battery processes that can both shift the emissions of those activities based on the location and enable a long-range plan for renewable energy.

A notable program in the electrification space was our 2022/2023 roll out of over 1,000 electric delivery vehicles around the country to both U.S. franchisees and U.S. Company-owned stores. This effort solves two challenges at once – helping reduce tailpipe emissions and reaching a new labor pool of delivery drivers who may not have vehicles of their own. To learn more about EV delivery at Domino’s, visit https://www.dominos.com/evfleet/.

An even larger part of our electrification journey lies in our supply chain delivery fleet of semi-trucks, box trucks and refrigerated delivery trailers. 2022 saw the early development of concepts to tackle this challenge and we believe this space will be a major driver of our scopes 1 & 2 emissions journey in the future.
While we work to ensure compliance with relevant electric vehicle standards and rules, we’ll also continue exploring alternative, sustainable fuel sources that may also have potential to meet our decarbonization goals and be viable at scale.

Finally, we know that we cannot achieve our ambitious targets without renewable energy. We are continuing to develop our renewable energy roadmap, which we will use to strategically procure and invest in renewable energy as well as test the various approaches that may work best for our broader value chain. On- or near-site solar, green tariffs, renewable energy credits, and virtual power purchase agreements are all possible solutions we are assessing and may to bring to life in 2024 and beyond.

As we continue to get better data from our buildings, learn from our franchisees and suppliers, and pilot new technologies, we intend to scale what works and always focus on integrating and embedding the various ideas into existing business processes.

APPROACH 2: SUPPLIER ENGAGEMENT

Domino’s purchased goods (scope 3) represent a significant, although complex, opportunity to reduce our overall carbon footprint. Our top 5 ingredients comprise over 30% of our overall carbon footprint, with four of them being animal-based products (cheese, chicken, pork, and beef) and one grain-based (flour). While beef, pork and chicken represent a smaller percentage of purchased goods than other products, they represent a higher portion of our overall carbon footprint.

The key to success for reducing our scope 3 FLAG emissions is building strong partnerships and collaborations with our supply chain partners. We feel confident that together with our supply chain partners, we can identify programs to reduce the footprint from these ingredients. We look forward to providing updates on these initiatives in future reports.

For more information on our work with suppliers, see our Responsible Sourcing pillar page.

WATER

Water is critical to our business as a raw material for our dough and other ingredients, but also for the safe and effective ongoing operations of our cleaning and processing activities. Our water stewardship work begins with our core permitting and compliance programs. Both stormwater and wastewater considerations are managed and designed to ensure compliance with all federal, state and local regulations. We maintain relevant national, state and local stormwater and wastewater permits to safeguard and protect local water quality.

Domino’s operational water consumption trends align with our business volume and are generally from municipal sources. Due to our food business, however, the majority of our water footprint comes from upstream water consumption associated with the production of ingredients and other key raw materials.

In 2023 we began assessing our overall water risk by conducting a water risk assessment using the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct tool and the World Wildlife Fund’s Water Risk Atlas. We evaluated all our U.S. and Canadian supply chain centers, our corporate-owned stores across the U.S. and the top 9 raw material commodities by water consumption. Using guidance from the Science-Based Targets Network, we assessed risk across water quality, quantity, and severe weather indicators, for both owned and supplier sites as well as agricultural supply sheds. With this risk assessment complete, we continue to identify and evaluate ways to reduce the risk through better data, supplier partnership, and operational efficiencies.

WASTE

As the No. 1 pizza company in the world, we know that we have a responsibility to advance a circular economy, and we believe that starts with evolving and innovating our waste management practices in order to reduce waste and improve packaging throughout our value chain. Our supply chain centers, stores, and corporate headquarters each present unique challenges that we are committed to tackling head on.

Our total waste strategy focuses on 2 main pillars: reducing operational waste and transitioning to sustainable packaging. We are currently developing new policies centered around both waste reduction and diversion and sustainable packaging in order to guide more sustainable business decisions.

Operational Waste Reduction

Supply chain center and store operations produce a variety of waste streams, such as dough and other organics, cardboard, plastic, and wood. By partnering with both local and national companies, we divert much of this waste from landfill. Much of our excess dough is recycled through ReConserve, where it is dried and ground to produce a high-energy component for livestock feed – this partnership alone has allowed us to divert more than 4,100 tons of waste in 2022. We are also investigating ways to reduce operational waste through improved product forecasting, supplier packaging efficiencies, and operational changes to further leverage existing untapped opportunities. In a new process at specific supply chain centers, the utilization of reusable metal carts for warehouse picking operations has resulted in a reduction of both shrink wrap and wood pallet waste going to our stores.

Sustainable Packaging Transition

In addition to waste generated from our operations, we know that primary guest packaging is another major contributor to our overall waste footprint. By investigating advancements in material use and recyclability, we are working toward enhancing the total circularity of our packaging. Increasing the recycled fiber content of our pizza boxes to more than 70%, paired with the launch of recycling.dominos.com in partnership with The Recycling Partnership, allows us to reduce the amount of virgin fiber required to produce our boxes while also supporting our customers by providing information on how and where to recycle our boxes. Because box fibers have a limit on the number of times it can viably be recycled, it is crucial that pizza boxes are diverted from landfill in order to meet the demands for recycled content in corrugated packaging. We are also in the process of investigating opportunities to reduce or eliminate single-use plastic utensils and packaging in specific markets in the U.S. and Canada. As we research ways to improve our packaging even further, we continue to assess the scalability of our solutions across the business for maximum impact.

DID YOU KNOW?

Our supply chain centers are rolling out a new process by which food is picked and organized according to each stop a driver makes. This reduces waste, reduces product damage, reduces idle time at each store delivery, increases speed and accuracy of order processing, and has shown to attract more diversity in our workforce.
With the newest supply chain centers in our network and our detailed mapping technology, we recently re-routed the deliveries to stores, reducing over thousands of miles from our annual network.
Recently introduced cold delivery bags that allow stores to send beverages, dip cups, salads, and other non-boxed items in an insulated, reusable bag that reduces the number of single-use plastic bags in our system and increases delivery expert safety with a cross-body strap.