ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

SUSTAINABLE APPAREL COALITION MEMBERSHIP

Since 2016, ODLO has been a member of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition {SAC}; a multi-stakeholder initiative of the global footwear and apparel industry. With this membership, ODLO joins over 230 global brands, retailers and manufacturers, as well as government, non-profit organizations and academic institutions, which are collectively committed to improving sustainability performance along the supply chain.

The Higg Index is the group’s tool of measurement for sustainability. It includes facility, brand and product tools that are open source and indicator-based. The Higg Index enables manufacturers, brands and retailers to evaluate their materials, products, facilities and processes based on environmental and product design choices.

With the implementation of the Higg Index, ODLO’s supply chain, as well as the brand itself, is assessed against an industry benchmark, holistically demonstrating the strengths and weaknesses of the corporate activities that empower ODLO to make meaningful improvements.

For more information about Sustainable Apparel Coalition: www.apparelcoalition.org

 

ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING

Developed in collaboration with industry leaders, the Higg Facility Environmental Module is a very effective sustainability assessment focusing on a facility’s outputs. The core focus herewith is on a facility’s systematic approach in performing for Environmental Management, Energy, Water & Wastewater, Air, Waste and Chemicals Management. As shown in the section sustainability, ODLO sets clear goals to reduce the company’s environmental impact, our supply chain partners play a key role in this ambition. We have set specific goals with regards to Renewable Energy, Water Use and Chemical Management. The Higg Facility Environmental Module helps us to collect data in these environmental areas so we can see, for example, how much water a facility is using, if wastewater is treated on site, or which type of energy is used. The tool helps us to identify impact hot spots in which we have the largest potential for improvements.

 

WORLD OF TRANSPORT

When it comes to a company’s environmental footprint, logistics play an important role. The mode of transportation has a major impact on the environment but there are as well many other areas we address from packaging, material recycling to energy use in our own distribution centre in Brüggen, Germany.

MODE OF TRANSPORTATION (GOODS RECEIVED 2019)


Land – 67%
Sea – 30%
Air – 3%

    The transportation of our products from the factories they are produced in to our warehouse in Germany contribute significantly to our greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, one of ODLO’s main focuses lies on reducing our impact in transportation. Wherever possible ODLO tries to transport goods by sea, as this is the most economical and environmentally friendly option, but of course this is not always possible. Decisions on transportation methods are heavily influenced by the origin of the products in question. Transport distances for our products can be kept rather short as 66% of the production volume origins from Europe, being sold as well in Europe - our biggest sales market. Due to our high production volume in Europe we set the priority to reduce our impact there. In 2018/19 we did successful trials with a new combination of rail and road shipping from our own production in Romania. With this change we can save 1.100 kg CO² per transport compared to truck only. In 2020 we will shift 90% of our deliveries from ODLO Romania to our central warehouse to rail and road, a big achievement in one year to reduce our CO2 footprint. In addition, we started extending rail and road to deliveries from Turkey and are further exploring the options for more European countries. We are also proud that we were able to reduce our air shipments from 8% to 3% in 2020. This is a great accomplishment was achieved by improved planning, continuous tracking and flexibility on order splits which significantly improves our carbon footprint. In addition, we continued with direct inbound shipments from Asian production partners to distribution parties in Asia to minimise the amount of double freight.

    With growing business, also the environmental impact of transportation due to our online shop shipments is growing. With the help of our partner DPD all our packages delivered by DPD are climate neutral, DPD is measuring all CO2 emissions caused by their transportation and is offsetting them through various national and international climate projects. DPD represents 30% of our total outbound shipments for E-commerce and B2B. In the future, we are planning to extend the climate neutral shipments as well with other logistic partners.

    This business year we made a great step by introducing climate neutral cartons for all outbound shipments. We decided to actively support climate protection with our packaging by offsetting our emissions through Climate Partner. How does carbon offsetting work? With the help of Climate Partner our carton supplier calculates the Co2 emissions of the entire order of cartons, these are compensated by supporting a climate protection project. It is important to mention that all projects are verified by an independent third party, our project in Kenya is verified by Det Norske Veritas and received VCS, CCBS gold level. Every time you receive a package from ODLO you can find a QR code on the box which tells you more details about the amount of emissions we compensated and the projects we support.

    Each carton we ship from our central warehouse in Brüggen actively supports the project of forest conservation of Kasigau Wildlife Corridor in Kenya. A total of 200 000 hectors of forest are conserved and local biodiversity is protected with this carbon offset project which are home to endangered species such as lions, zebras and parrots as well as countless species of birds and more than 2000 African elephants. In order to protect Kasigau Wildlife Corridor from massive deforestation and slash-burn practices rangers who guard and defend the area are being trained among the local population. More income opportunities for the local population are required in order to stem the depletion of the natural environment. That’s why the project creates jobs in factories and small businesses. With these actions the project supports 10 out of the 17 sustainable development Goals: Goal 1, Goal 3, Goal 4, Goal 5, Goal 6, Goal 8, Goal 11, Goal 13, Goal 15, Goal 17.
    More information can be found here: www.climate-project.com/1004

    Our logistics and E-commerce team further analysed our packaging footprint for outbound shipments. This year we started with saving material resources, for our steadily growing E-commerce business. We reduced the carton size and changed the material to 100% recycled material. A switch of the bigger cartons to recycled material was not yet possible to ensure the carton stability, but these continue to use certified FSC material. In addition, for closing the cartons instead of conventional plastic adhesive tape we started using wet adhesive tape made from natural rubber, following the approach every small step counts.

 


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