Hong Kong based fashion brand Esprit has made “significant progress” in its sustainability efforts over the course of the last year, and set out new guidelines to help orientate its next steps – including a requirement for all suppliers to publish wastewater data publicly.
Substantial headway has been made over the past two years in particular in the areas of sustainable products and materials, transparency, and the improvement of wastewater, Esprit explains in its third sustainability report.
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The company operates 666 retail stores and 20 e-shops, with a presence in 40 countries, and progress has been achieved over the past two years through strategic cooperation with partners such as Action, Collaboration, Transformation (ACT), CanopyStyle, and the Better Cotton Initiative.
In products and materials, Esprit has increased the share of organic cotton and recycled materials in its products and was certified with the Organic Content Standard, Recycled Claim Standard and the Responsible Wool Standard.
In August the company published a list of all its direct suppliers and subcontractors in accordance with the Human Rights Watch Transparency Pledge. The list includes the names of both the factory and its parent company along with its address, number of workers, and the type of product produced.
Along with the list, Esprit has shared figures of the countries of origin for its products in 2015-2016 based on order quantity.
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By GlobalDataEsprit’s finished goods are sourced from over 25 countries throughout Asia, Africa and Europe. In the period, 28.86% of its order quantity originated in China, while Bangladesh was a close second with 28.77%. Vietnam had the next largest share at 2.85%, followed by India with 6.52%, Turkey at 5.94% and Pakistan with 5.78%.
Other highlights include a newly-developed training and auditing programme for wet processing facilities – where printing, dyeing and finishing takes place – which contributes to a cleaner supply chain, and a new cross-departmental steering committee. Launched in the spring of this year, the group aims to ensure all Esprit employees work toward the company’s sustainability goals, with members including top management from operations, logistics, supply chain and marketing.
“Last year we were able to achieve significant progress in our efforts toward an even stronger anchoring of the sustainability principle in our company,” says CEO Jose Manuel Martínez Gutiérrez. “In this way, we get closer to our long-term goal of integrating sustainability into all business processes.”
Looking ahead, Martínez Gutiérrez says including more sustainability in the business and its processes is a long-term goal. “It will continue to be a challenge for many years to come, which underscores why we need to be working on it now,” he explains.
“As we consider the most urgent sustainability topics and set our priorities accordingly, there are several areas in particular where we see our engagement increasing,” Martínez Gutiérrez continues.
“We believe in implementing cleaner chemistry, and in cleaner production, which is an approach for manufacturing using fewer resources. Beyond manufacturing, we see a role for responsible resource use throughout the life cycle of a garment, from raw material to retail. This covers topics such as water use, pesticide and fertilizer use, and energy use and emissions, as well as chemicals.”
Future goals include sourcing 50% of its cotton from more sustainable sources by 2021, a challenge for a brand that uses predominantly cotton, Martínez Gutiérrez says.
Other plans include rethinking buying practices and aligning them with the company’s goal of supporting a living wage in manufacturing regions, and a requirement for all suppliers to publish wastewater data publicly by the end of April 2018, and incorporating the Higg Index Facility Environmental Module as a tool for improvement.
Click here to access the sustainability report, and here to view Esprit’s supplier list.
