Recycling, reusing, and reducing

As part of its commitment to sustainability and conserving resources, Truist is working to recycle and reuse resources while also investing in more energy efficient equipment and technology to support a more sustainable future.

These efforts help us make progress toward our goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and first-generation sustainability targets that use 2019 as a baseline, which are:

•       Reducing Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 35% each by 2030
•       Lowering water consumption by 25% by 2030

Truist invested $5 million at more than 150 locations on more efficient LED lighting and energy management systems in 2022. We also spent over $500,000 in HVAC optimization and smart irrigation systems.

Truist also decommissioned two obsolete enterprise data centers and a third smaller data center in 2022, and migrated those workloads to newer data centers that are more energy efficient. Truist is deploying newer generation servers and mainframes that have higher efficiency power supplies, which lowers energy consumption.

Truist’s other sustainability initiatives include a refrigerant management program to improve tracking of refrigerant usage and identify equipment that uses refrigerants with higher global warming potential (GWP). The program also helps us minimize refrigerant loss and advance the adoption of lower GWP refrigerants to ready the Truist portfolio for the transition to next-generation refrigerants.

Additionally, in 2022 we implemented a chiller optimization project and retro-commissioning effort, both of which emerged from ASHRAE level-2 energy audits that were performed in 2021. Truist continued this energy audit cycle in 2022, and the resulting projects help keep larger administrative buildings running efficiently while driving down energy consumption.

Recycle and reuse

We’re supporting the circular economy by buying recycled, reused, and remanufactured materials. When we moved one of our Dallas offices to a different building, we opted to buy previously used and remanufactured furniture including workstations, chairs, filing cabinets, and conference room tables. The project reduced the total cost of the relocation, created new demand for remanufactured furniture to support domestic jobs, kept 20,148 pounds of the original material out of landfills, and reduced the need for new raw materials.

Truist is also looking for ways to recycle and donate furniture that we no longer need. We partnered with the MillerKnoll rePurpose Program and InstallNET to donate and reuse more than 927,000 pounds (about 464 tons) of furniture that we no longer need. Nearly all of the furniture was given to several dozen nonprofits, schools, community centers, and other organizations that could use the furniture as-is. The rest was given to firms to remanufacture, allowing for reuse by others. This diverted waste from landfills and allowed charities to focus more of their funds on advancing their missions.

We continue to choose flooring material made with recycled content to reduce our carbon footprint and keep material out of landfills. In the first three quarters of 2022, Truist helped divert 227,466 pounds of material from landfills by using recycled content instead of virgin material, according to data provided by the vendor. Since 2019, Truist’s purchases of flooring products made from recycled material have kept more than 1 million pounds of material out of landfills.