O honor all commitments o protect all suppliers

o
Honor all commitments.
o
Protect all suppliers’ property assigned to Costco as though it were our own.
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Not accept gratuities of any kind from a supplier.
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If in doubt as to what course of action to take on a business matter that is open to
varying ethical interpretations, TAKE THE HIGH ROAD AND DO WHAT IS
RIGHT.
If we do these four things throughout our organization, then we will achieve our ultimate
goal, which is to:

5. Reward our shareholders — As a company with stock that is traded publicly on the
NASDAQ stock exchange, our shareholders are our business partners. We can only be
successful so long as we are providing them with a good return on the money they invest
in our company…. We pledge to ope rate our company in such a way that our present and
future stockholders, as well as our employees, will be rewarded for our efforts.
Environmental Sustainability
In recent years, Costco management had undertaken a series of initiatives to invest in various
environmental and energy saving systems. The stated objective was to ensure that the company’s
carbon footprint grew at a slower rate than the company’s sales growth. Going into 2014, Costco
had rooftop solar photovoltaic systems in operation at 77 of its facilities. All new facilities were
being designed and constructed to be more energy efficient. Costco’s metal warehouse design,
which included use of recycled steel, was consistent with the requirements of the Silver Level
LEED Standard — the certification standards of the organization Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design (LEED) — and nationally accepted as a benchmark green building design
and construction. Costco’s recently developed non -metal designs for warehouses had resulted in
the ability to meet Gold Level LEED Standards.
Energy efficient lighting and energy efficient mechanical systems for heating, cooling, and
refrigeration were being installed in all new facilities and at growing numbers of older facilities.
Internet-based energy management systems had been installed, giving Costco the ability to
regulate energy usage on an hourly basis at all of its warehouses in North America and at some
international locations. These energy-saving initiatives had reduced the lighting loads on
Costco’s sal es floors by 50 percent from 2001 to 2014.
Other initiatives included working with suppliers to make greater use of sales-floor-ready
packaging, changing container shapes from round to square (to enable more units to be stacked
on a single pallet on warehouse sales floors and to conserve on trucking freight costs), making
greater use of recycled plastic packaging, reusing cardboard packaging (empty store cartons were
given to members to carry their purchases home), and expanding the use of non-chemical water
treatment systems used in warehouse cooling towers to reduce the amount of chemicals going
into sewer systems. In addition, a bigger portion of the trash that warehouses generated each
week, much of which was formerly sent to landfills, was being recycled into usable products or