At Extra Space Storage, we care about making a difference in the world. Our company has taken important steps to promote a better future for our employees, customers, shareholders, and the environment. Through our environmental, social, and governance sustainability initiatives, we believe we can improve our operations and make a positive overall impact.
Our Environmental Initiatives
Extra Space Storage is committed to reducing our carbon footprint and creating environmental stability for future generations. With better energy efficiencies, waste reduction practices, increased recycling efforts, and reduction of water consumption, we strive to serve as stewards of the environment.
Energy Efficiency
Saving energy has been one of our top priorities over the last few years. By equipping our properties with high-efficiency lighting systems, modern energy-saving fixtures and bulbs, and motion-activated systems that automatically turn lights on and off, we’ve made huge strides in reducing our energy usage. In addition, we’ve completed 400+ solar installations at self storage locations throughout the country. These efforts have helped us achieve LEED Gold Certification at 16 of our properties and gain recognition as one of the Top 25 Corporate Users by Number of Solar Installations.
Waste Reduction & Recycling
We continue to find new ways to reduce the amount of waste our company produces. The products sold at our self storage locations contain recycled materials, and our moving boxes in particular have been certified by the Sustainable Forestry Initiative. We also utilize digital forms with our rental agreements to reduce the amount of paper used in transactions—in fact, we’ve saved over 58 million sheets of paper since this initiative was introduced in 2012. And at our corporate headquarters in Salt Lake City, we provide water refilling stations and encourage our employees to utilize reusable cups and bottles to reduce the number of cans, bottles, cups, and straws used in our office.
Water Consumption
Historically, self storage properties have been low consumers of water and low producers of water waste. Even still, we work to reduce this already low usage by incorporating more efficient irrigation systems and plumbing devices. Also, when possible, we look for opportunities to xeriscape or install low-maintenance landscaping that doesn’t require significant water usage at our self storage properties across the country.
Our Social Initiatives
At Extra Space Storage, we believe our greatest asset is our people. We know that when we care for our people, they will reflect that same care with our customers and our facilities. It’s why we prioritize recruiting, training, and retaining talented people within our organization. All of the work we put into these social initiatives have led to Extra Space Storage being named on national lists like Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work 2020 and Forbes America’s Best Mid-Size Employers.
Employee Engagement
We want our employees to have a career path, not just a job. That’s why we provide our team with leadership and development programs, tuition reimbursement, and scholarship opportunities. We also give employees a voice through our annual anonymous employee engagement survey, which measures employee satisfaction, views of management, and other feedback. The results from this survey help guide our decisions with adjusting company policies and practices for the benefit of our employees.
Employee Wellness
We believe in fostering a work environment that promotes work-life balance and wellness for our employees. With flexible work schedules, competitive health benefits, paid time off, volunteer opportunities, health and wellness coaching, and fun fitness challenges, we encourage a healthy lifestyle within our organization. At our corporate office, we also have an on-site gym, ergonomic furniture, and an increased level of natural light in workspaces to support this initiative.
Employee Safety
Safety for both our employees and customers is of the utmost importance. We thoroughly train our employees on health and safety best practices, and we coach them on identifying potential hazards, preventing incidents, security, crisis communication, and more. This helps us cultivate safe and clean facilities for our customers. We also regularly survey our customers through our “Voice of the Customer” program to ensure we’re upholding their expectations and the standards we’ve determined.
Our Governance Initiatives
Extra Space Storage strives to present an overall structure that’s responsive to our stockholders’ views. We’ve instituted stockholder engagement programs and invite our stockholders to contact our management board and attend quarterly earning conference calls. In addition, we encourage our directors to regularly meet with senior management and other employees to help promote the long-term interests of our stockholders and strengthen management accountability.
During the past three years, we’ve implemented significant changes as a result of stockholder feedback and outreach efforts, and we intend to continue this proactive communication to ensure we’re fulfilling our commitment to strong corporate governance.
Learn more about how our increasingly sustainable self storage facilities contribute to Extra Space Storage’s economic growth.