Sargent's has a desire to achieve sustainability and conserve energy, waste, and water.  We are already making great efforts and strive to do more so that we can make a bigger impact in the years to come. Here are a few examples of our efforts.

• Participate in the United Nations Billion Tree Campaign (this campaign promotes planting a billion trees worldwide)
• Donate space and plants to the Red Wing Environmental Learning Center seedling tree sale (happening over Earth Day weekend)
• Use high-efficiency infrared radiant heaters in our new retail greenhouses (save 30-40% energy over standard gas forced air heaters)
• Installed open-air greenhouses in 2001 which vent/cool by opening roofs and allowing 100% natural ventilation, saving energy.
• Use ebb-flood water recycling benches in all our new greenhouses and in 25% of our production houses.  (recycle/reuse 100% of our water on these tables conserving water, fertilizer, and labor as well as allowing 100% of fertilizer to be used by plants and not putting a single drop of water or fertilizer down the drain or into our water table)
• Participate with the MNLA plastic pot recycling program to recycle plastic nursery pots, flats, cell paks, and hanging baskets (products get ground up and reused as landscape edging and infused into road base to name a couple)
• We plant a larger percentage every year of our hanging baskets into paper pulp reusable hanging baskets which lessens the amount of plastic waste generated by our crops.
• We have done an energy audit and found ways to conserve/reduce the energy we use as a business.  One example was to remove the decorative covers on all our fluorescent light ballasts throughout all the offices.  By doing this we were able to remove 50% of the light bulbs and still have the same light quality.  This saved us 32 watts per bulb removed times over 70 bulbs for a daily energy reduction of over 2,000 watts!
• Sell and promote a full line of organic products ranging from organically grown garden seeds, to lawn and garden fertilizers, insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides. Attempt to make our product lineup diverse so that anything we sell in non-organic now has an organic alternative on the shelves.
• Sell water conservation products such as rain barrels and rain chains.  Barrels capture rainwater that homeowners can use on their lawn or gardens and rain chains are a decorative way to slow the water that spills down your downspouts and prevents unnecessary erosion and allows the ground to absorb more water and lessen runoff directly into the storm sewers.
• Design/install “rain gardens” which help slow water runoff and naturally filter chemical impurities and prevent groundwater contamination.  This is a growing category and we want to promote this and be the experts on helping homeowners and businesses do their part to help the environment through simple, low-maintenance practices.
• Sell native plant species which further encourages the protection and utilization of what our natural world provides.  We are trying to grow this plant category and promote its benefits to the consumer and the environment.
• Use recyclable cardboard trays for customers to carry out their plants.  They are not FREE and is a big expense to the company but they can be used over and over and when done can be recycled.  We are not using plastic or petroleum driven products and are minimizing our waste impacts. 
• Promote and use new LED light technology with all of our new Christmas lights.  We sell these to our customers and also have purchased and outfitted all of our store outside facades with new LED lights.  This was a larger investment but saves up to 95% of the energy compared to conventional lights and disposal of them does not have any mercury, tungsten, or other precious metals like other lights