In a little less than two years, VF Corporation has used
science-based targets (SBTs) to make significant, meaningful — and most
importantly, measurable — progress on a set of goals aimed at making the company
more circular, impactful and sustainable.
The company — which includes many well-known apparel and sports brands such as
The North Face, Timberland,
Vans,
JanSport, and Kipling, among others — released its 2021 Made for Change
Sustainability and Responsibility Report last
week.
“We're already making notable progress across all areas of our roadmap, which is
really exciting,” says Jeannie Renne-Malone, VF Corp’s VP of Global
Sustainability, told Sustainable Brands™.
VF Corp initially announced its targets in collaboration with the Science Based
Targets Initiative in late
2019.
Using this approach wasn’t easy, says Renne-Malone, as it represented, to many
within the company, an entirely new way of thinking.
“’Science-based targets’ is not something that rolls off everyone's tongue —
it’s a complex topic for those that aren't deep in the weeds in it,”
Renne-Malone says. “So, it took a lot of awareness building and education.”
At its core, SBTs enable
ambitious corporate action by providing companies a clearly-defined path to reduce
emissions and other environmental impacts, aimed at preventing the worst impacts
of climate change.
For VF Corporation, this meant setting goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
by 55 percent by 2030, source 100 percent renewable energy by 2025, and
eliminate all non-essential single-use plastics from its direct operations and
sponsored events by 2023, among others.
Setting targets is one thing. But achieving them has often proven to be a
challenge; and there are countless brands that have failed to act quickly, or
broadly enough, to achieve their lofty goals. It’s still too soon to tell if VF
Corp will hit its targets; but in a short time frame, it has made remarkable
progress — reducing emissions by 17 percent, sourcing 29 percent renewable
energy, and increasing the use of recycled polyester and other materials.
According to Renne-Malone, part of the reason for this was making sustainability
a company-wide effort rather than a niche project.
“We made scientific targets a responsibility of every team within our
organization, rather than simply something our sustainability team was striving
for,” she says. “As a result, we were able to implement cross-functional
programs that are driving real impact in the areas of sustainable materials,
factory operations, renewable energy, and others.”
One area that has seen notable — and needed — progress is circularity. The
Napapijri brand created one of the industry’s first circular
jackets, while SmartWool
launched a sock take-back program, which turns the used socks into filling for
dog beds. VF Corp is also looking beyond better manufacturing practices to how
it can ensure better practices at the sources of many of its raw materials —
farms — through regenerative
agriculture.
“We have several pilots underway globally across five of our key materials;
rubber,
cotton,
leather,
wool and sugar cane,” Renne-Malone says. “This also includes one pilot that will
help us build the industry's first fully regenerative rubber supply chain.”
While most of the report focuses on VF Corp’s environmental footprint, the
company says it also cares about people, including those working along its
supply chain. The apparel industry as a whole is under increasing pressure due
to revelations that many suppliers in China — the world’s top producer of
world’s cotton, and other raw materials used by major brands around the world —
are using forced labor of ethnic
Uyghurs
in their supply chains.
This comes alongside worrying evidence of massive concentration camps and
the destruction of Uyghur religious and cultural
sites
— to the extent that the United States has declared it a
genocide.
VF Corporation told Sustainable Brands that it takes these concerns seriously.
“We do not source from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, directly or
indirectly, any products nor raw materials, in compliance of course with US laws
and sanctions as well as all the other jurisdictions in which we operate,”
Peter Higgins, VF’s VP for Global Responsible Sourcing, told SB.
He also expressed full confidence in the company’s auditing system at monitoring
forced labor in China, and elsewhere, despite challenges due to the pandemic.
“The inability to travel, especially in the beginning of the pandemic, did
represent a challenge ... for many looking to get eyes and ears on factories
around the world,” Higgins says. “We were able to successfully pivot our audit
program to virtual audits and video training that we conducted rather
successfully.”
One way that VF Corp will be able to reduce the risk of forced labor in its
sourcing is by ensuring all of its cotton — a crop that is too often grown in
countries with widespread labor
abuses
— comes from the
US
or Australia, is third-party certified, or otherwise meets strict criteria
for being regeneratively
grown.
In fact, it’s already almost there — sourcing 75 percent of its cotton under
these standards last year.
Of course, making initial progress is good — but sustaining it is important as
the efforts scale up. As big as VF is, it’s still just a single player. That is
why the company hopes to expand partnerships to ensure industry-wide — or even
cross-industry — change.
“We have to really share our story, share best practices, and partner with
others in our industry — and outside — to make the progress that we need to make
within this decade of action,” Renne-Malone says.
Science-based targets helped shape the path; now it's up to VF Corporation — and
the apparel industry as a whole — to show that circular, socially and
environmentally sustainable apparel are the future of fashion.
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Media, Campaign and Research Consultant
Nithin is a freelance writer who focuses on global economic, and environmental issues with an aim at building channels of communication and collaboration around common challenges.
Published Nov 1, 2021 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET