Norrøna determined to stay on the road towards transparency
Norwegian outdoor brand Norrøna has said it accepts the decision of the Norwegian Consumer Authority (NCA) that it must change or remove marketing information, based on the Higg Sustainable Materials Index (MSI), that claims a lower environmental impact for some of the brand’s products.
The NCA has ruled the claims “misleading” and has given the brand until August 14 to change or remove them. Please see separate story.
In a statement that Norrøna chief executive, Jørgen Jørgensen, gave to sportstextiles, he made it clear that the brand wants everything it does to be in keeping with “all applicable laws” and that it has no desire to mislead its customers in any way.
He explained that the Higg MSI and the non-profit organisation behind it, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), seemed to Norrøna to be “the leading tool provider to help measure the overall social and environmental impact of our industry, based on the best available information”. Nevertheless, he acknowledged that, even though the coalition launched the first version of the index in 2011, the Higg MSI and other similar tools “are in their early days and they must progress to include other impacts such as impact on biodiversity, durability, end of use and plastic pollution”.
He said there was no “perfect tool” and said if there were organisations that had a better solution, Norrøna would be happy to receive their help and recommendations. “As a small company we can’t afford to do all the assessments ourselves,” Mr Jørgensen said, “and we think it is important that small companies are not left behind when it comes to analysing and communicating environmental impacts.”
He said Norrøna was “committed to the journey towards becoming a 100% responsible company”. The brand invests in high-quality materials, he added, and works with its material suppliers to develop materials with a lower environmental impact. It offers a five-year warranty on products and has been committed to repairing products “for decades” already.
There are repair centres at the company’s headquarters in Norway and at a number of stores around the world. Across these sites, Norrøna repaired more than 14,000 products in 2021. “The only way to run a company is with a sustainable platform,” the chief executive concluded.
