2013 Corporate Responsibility Report

Letter from Ron Sargent
Dear Valued Stakeholder,
Staples is reinventing our company. We have set aggressive goals, including accelerated growth in our online business and
expanding our product assortment. We are also working to reduce operational costs to ensure that we have the resources to
invest in our future growth.
One that hasn’t changed is our commitment to the corporate responsibility programs that make Staples a great corporate
citizen and also a great place for our associates to work. Our commitments to community engagement, ethics and integrity,
diversity and inclusion, and sustainability support our top and bottom lines by better meeting customer needs, contributing to
our expanded product assortment, reducing risk, and increasing operational efficiencies.
I invite you to read more about our corporate responsibility activities and accomplishments throughout the following pages,
but would also like to share key highlights below. Throughout the past year, we have continued to:
• Engage the communities where we work and live — This year, we donated more than $10.1 million to non-profit
organizations around the world through Staples Foundationsm, corporate charitable giving programs, in-kind
donations and cause marketing efforts (this includes $2.5 million that our associates directed to the more than
1,000 organizations that they care about most). Meanwhile, our customers donated more than $2.3 million
through our cause marketing and disaster relief campaigns. We also established the Staples Emergency Education
Fund with Save the Children to support educational needs in times of crisis.
• Build ethics and integrity into the way we work — This year, we continued to successfully deliver information
about ethics and compliance to our associate community to ensure associates have the knowledge and tools
they need to act with integrity. To accomplish this, we centralized our ethics information management, revised and
streamlined training programs, and provided live training to business units across the company. We also continued
implementing the Staples Supplier Code of Conduct, inspecting nearly half of the supplier factories producing our
Staples ® brand products to ensure compliance.
• Foster diversity and inclusion among our associates — This year, we further strengthened our commitment to
diversity and inclusion by growing our network of Associate Resource Groups (ARGs), which provide Staples with
a business advantage and its members with a myriad of benefits like a collective voice, a sense of empowerment,
and deeper company engagement. Specifically, we launched several veterans’ ARGs and created external and
internal Web pages to help veteran associates and applicants. Meanwhile, the Staples Supplier Diversity program
continued to engage with diverse suppliers, organizations and the larger community. Collectively, these initiatives
help strengthen relationships with our customers and provide flexibility and adaptability in a changing global
marketplace.
• Generate shared environmental and business benefits — This year, we continued to focus on reducing our
customers’ environmental impacts as well our own. Globally, we offer more than 10,000 products and counting
with environmental attributes in our stores and online, representing more than $3 billion in annual sales. We
expanded our U.S. customer recycling programs to add online ink and toner cartridge collection and also
launched an online and in-store technology trade-in program, and continued rolling out our right-size packaging
technology. Internally, we reduced our impacts through our ENERGY STAR ® buildings, renewable energy
initiatives, and environmental management systems, among others
Looking to the future, we will continue working toward our corporate responsibility goals, and sharing updates on our
progress. Because we operate in an ever-changing global marketplace with rapidly evolving trends, opportunities and
challenges, we evaluate our program priorities regularly to stay relevant and responsive.
We’re focused on how we can add value for our customers, our associates and the communities in which we work and live,
whether we’re deepening associate and customer engagement in our philanthropic activities, expanding our resources for
underrepresented minorities or adding more eco-conscious products to our expanding assortment.
Sincerely,
Ron Sargent
Chairman & CEO
Staples 2013 Corporate Responsibility Report
2