California Apparel News

Its motto is “Youth Against Establishment,” but Orange County, Calif.–based skate/lifestyle brand Volcom will lay a claim to be among the most solid environmental citizens in the fashion world.

Last month, Volcom announced that it would produce an environmental profit and loss audit. It will be one of the few companies that quantifies how much the production of its popular clothes costs the environment.

Once the EP&L statement is complete—possibly by the end of the year—Volcom will judge how it can cut the company’s carbon emissions, waste and water usage by 25 percent by 2016.

“Our goal is to make sustainability part of our DNA,” said Derek Sabori, Volcom’s senior director of sustainability. Volcom’s French-based parent company, Kering—which also owns Puma, Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen—has made environmental citizenship a company-wide focus.

In May 2011, Puma released the first phase of its EP&L and the final EP&L in November 2011. It drew praise from environmental groups, European governments and other businesses. The report found that Puma’s worldwide operations, including the manufacturing production of its third-party vendors, cost the environment. “The sustainability of business itself depends on the long-term availability of natural capital,” said Jochen Zeitz, former chief sustainability officer of Kering and former chairman of Puma. He currently serves on the board of Kering.

“If we treated our planet as we treat any other service provider, Puma would have to pay 8 million euros [$10.5 million] to nature for services rendered to our core operations such as Puma offices, warehouses and stores in 2010 alone,” he said in the EP&L. “In addition, 137 million euros [$180 million] would be owed to nature from Puma’s supply chain of external partners.” Zeitz said that Puma’s economically quantifying its environmental impact will not affect the company’s net earnings.

Puma has not released what steps it has taken to cut its environmental waste. But the brand had already committed to a 25 percent reduction of carbon dioxide, energy, water and waste by 2015 in the announcement of its long-term strategy in 2010. Puma also joins Volcom and all of Kering’s luxury and sport and lifestyle brands in reaching the group’s sustainability targets by 2016.

The mere accounting of a business’s environmental costs is important, said Kevin Whilden, a social entrepreneur and co-founder of Sustainable Surf, a nonprofit that advises surf companies on sustainable business practices. “Most companies really only look at their direct impacts, such as buildings and employees. The EP&L looks at impacts from a company’s suppliers, its raw-material suppliers. ... It is quite impressive,” he said.

The apparel industry’s credibility in the environmental world took a hit last month when prominent environmental group Greenpeace International released its report “Toxic Threads: Polluting Paradise.” According to the report, some of the apparel business’s most high-marquee names—including Gap Inc., Adidas Group, Brooks Bros., H&M and Japanese company Marubeni—worked with an Indonesian factory owned by PT Gistex Group, which has a history of dumping chemicals deemed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to be highly toxic to aquatic life.

In a statement, Gap Inc. said that it does not work with the factory investigated by Greenpeace. Rather, it has worked with another facility run by PT Gistex. “We have established best practices with mills to reduce the environmental impact of fabric dyeing and finishing,” said Debbie Mesloh, Gap Inc.’s senior director of public affairs.

“We also have a long-established product-testing program and use accredited independent third-party labs to test our branded products. We know that, as an industry, more needs to be done, and at Gap Inc. we continue to evolve our sourcing practices.”

Cleaning up

Other companies have worked to clean the apparel industry’s dirty reputation. Levi Strauss & Co., for example, developed a code of conduct for its suppliers to place standards for labor, safety and environment. “We monitor our suppliers to ensure they are following our requirements,” said Kris Marubio, a Levi’s representative.

The company is working to promote transparency, by the end of 2013, on how manufacturers discard hazardous chemicals, according to Levi’s 2012 annual report. It also joined Kering, Nike and H&M in the “Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals” program by 2020. It also is a member of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which was founded in 2009 by Patagonia and Walmart to help assess standards to make an environmentally friendlier supply chain.

Surf and skate companies are also known for their support of environmental initiatives. Sole Technology Inc., a Lake Forest, Calif., footwear and apparel company, named a manager of environmental affairs in 2007, becoming one of the first surf and skate companies to do so. It also built its headquarters from sustainable materials and powered it with 600 solar panels. In 2007, it also undertook an environmental audit similar to Volcom’s EP&L. It aspires to be a carbon-neutral company by 2020, said Pierre André Senizergues, company founder and chief executive officer. He also noted that it is getting easier to be a green company.

“We are seeing more and more materialization available that we can use to reduce our footprint, which was not available 10 years ago,” he said. “The suppliers are bringing more options to the table. Unfortunately, the cost of products is going up due to the cost of labor in China, which does make it hard for companies to incorporate specialty materials.”

Ecologically minded fashion is becoming good business, said Todd Roberts, co-owner of ZJ Boarding House boutique in Santa Monica, Calif.

“I’ve seen a steady increase in the environmentally friendly product offerings in the last few years, and it’s great to see,” Roberts said. “In most cases customers get excited to discover sustainable products in our shops. A large mix of the boardshorts we sell are made from recycled plastic bottles. Companies like Billabong and Hurley have been doing this for years, and they call it out in their ads, with their POP (displays) and on their hangtags.”

If these products are marketed well, consumers seek them out, he said.

However, there’s a lot more work to do, Sabori said. “The best of the program is still to come,” he said. Just getting environmentally sustainable practices on radar screens has been one of Sabori’s priorities since starting his job in 2010. “Changing the culture and getting everybody to speak the same language is important. What does sustainability mean to the company? What can I do in my department to help us drive to the goals we have set? Getting to work on supply chain—that is where the real heavy lifting will be.”