Sustainable materials and products

Thinking strategically about sustainable materials

As a consumer-facing company serving millions of people every day, we have both a responsibility and an opportunity to enable more sustainable choices. Doing so strengthens trust, reduces exposure to chemicals of concern and meets evolving expectations from the stakeholders who rely on us.

Our extensive reach means even small operational shifts can deliver meaningful reductions in resource use and environmental impact. We work closely with suppliers to accelerate adoption of more efficient, resilient and lower-impact materials and systems, and we encourage responsible disposal and improved end-of-life outcomes, supported by clearer guidance, better system design and collaboration across the value chain. This helps protect environmental and human health, strengthens our business resilience and supports clearer, more consistent experiences for both colleagues and consumers.

Reducing plastic across CVS Health

At CVS Health, we strive to reduce and responsibly manage how we are using plastic across our business, while acknowledging that plastic is needed for safe care delivery and product quality.

The chemicals in plastics can have serious implications for human health. Exposure to them has been linked to health issues including obesity, thyroid disorder, infertility, respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular disease and more.

At the same time, plastics remain essential for safe care delivery, medication integrity and product quality. Balancing these realities requires a more flexible, system-level approach that reflects how plastics are used and managed across health care and retail environments.

We aim to eliminate or use less plastic, replace plastic with alternative sustainable materials and identify new strategies to increase recyclability and safer end-of-use disposal of the materials we use where we can. This enterprise-wide approach extends beyond product packaging to include operational, supply-chain and distribution plastics.

In 2025, we evolved our enterprise plastic strategy to better guide how we prioritize, sequence and scale action across the business. This shift moved us away from material‑specific goals and toward a more holistic plastic stewardship framework aligned with evolving state‑level regulations. This evolution focuses our ambition by grounding our actions in what will drive the greatest, most durable impact across our business. It reflects changes in the business and regulatory landscape, limitations in material availability and recycling infrastructure and positions us to focus on operational efficiency, supply chain collaboration and improving waste diversion, where feasible.

Our evolved strategy focuses on: Driving measurable progress in reducing virgin plastic use and improving end-of-life outcomes for plastics, while balancing health care quality, safety and consumer experience.

We are committed to transparency and accountability. Through our evolved plastics strategy, we are prioritizing programs that address plastic streams representing more than 75% of our plastic footprint, and we will refine this coverage over time. We will continue to report on our enterprise plastic footprint and our progress annually.

Learn more about our plastic footprint

Learn more about our store brand packaging sustainability efforts

Lowering paper consumption

Our efforts to improve the health of our planet include reducing our use of natural resources such as paper, which is sourced from ecosystems that support clean air, resilient communities and human well-being. We are focused on reducing the impacts of paper use across our operations by using digital tools that enhance efficiency, reduce waste and improve the experience for both colleagues and consumers. By shifting to more sustainable, technology-enabled solutions, we help protect forests and the essential natural resources they provide to support healthier people and a healthier planet.

Going digital with consumers

Our customers are more digitally engaged than ever. In 2016, we began offering a digital receipt opt-in for CVS Pharmacy customers. Since 2021, we have expanded this option to allow customers to choose a digital receipt, or no receipt, at nearly every sales transaction. We also ensure our receipt paper at all CVS Pharmacy locations is recyclable and free of ingredients with harmful health impacts. Our receipts have been BPA-free since 2012 and BPS-free since 2020 and 216M+ paper receipts have been eliminated.

Going digital with colleagues

Our managed print solution, Print+, continues to replace network printing systems in CVS Health offices, reducing paper consumption and adding a layer of security to print jobs. With over 1,300 Print+ printers currently enabled across more than 90 corporate office locations, the program saves millions of sheets of paper and supply costs.

We leverage QR code log-on instructions for all new-hire technology devices. Instructions on how to get started with us are always readily available digitally and this initiative has reduced printing by an estimated 320,000 color pages per year.

Waste management

Effective waste management is critical to protecting environmental and community health and our approach is key to how we’re approaching plastics. We are reducing waste across our operations by prioritizing prevention and improving recovery and disposal pathways.

Mail order plastic recycling

Our specialty pharmacy operations provide over nine million medication packages by mail each year for patients managing complex and chronic conditions. Small changes can make a big difference in packaging materials, so we’re optimizing shipping efficiencies while exploring safe, high-quality and sustainable alternatives.

Our Mount Prospect, IL mail order and specialty pharmacy facilities leverage robust waste management practices that enable the majority of site waste to be recycled annually, including nearly 20,000 pounds of plastic in 2025.

E-waste reduction

We refurbish, redeploy, re-sell and recycle IT equipment, with our more than 300,000 colleagues returning an average of nearly 12,000 items per month. A “scan and go” process lets colleagues easily and safely return computers and other tech items while avoiding the use of extra material to ship gear – reducing the risk of equipment damage and boosting recovery rates and timeframes.

Reducing product waste

We’ve reduced the number of store products that can no longer be sold by approximately 16%, through improved inventory management that better aligns supply with customer demand.

But for those products that still need to be disposed — whether due to seasonality, discontinuation or an approaching expiration date, we work to ensure that we are responsibly managing these products. We pursue liquidation, donation or recycling whenever possible to keep products out of landfills.

Managing pharmaceutical waste

We are reducing pharmaceutical waste across the company and improving product availability by reallocating inventory to retail pharmacy locations where it is more likely to be used before expiration. This work significantly reduces replenishment needs, packaging waste and the environmental budget associated with discarding millions of medications. In 2025, our non-refrigerated redeploy program moved more than 250,000 orders, avoided the disposal of valuable medication and generated $1 billion in savings for our business. 

To extend these benefits to cold-chain products, we piloted a reusable, self-refrigerated packing cube in 2025. Each cube replaces traditional cold-chain packaging like cardboard, expanded polystyrene, cold bricks and labels, significantly reducing waste while improving product recovery. This program, which we will scale in 2026, has already generated $132,000 in value for the company. 

These combined efforts help reduce pharmaceutical waste, lower emissions and eliminate unnecessary packaging while strengthening the resiliency of our supply chain.