Patagonia tracks garment footprint
Outdoor clothing, footwear and equipment company Patagonia is to track the social and environmental impact of specific garments through The Footprint Chronicles, an interactive website that reveals to consumers the good and the bad aspects of the manufacturing process.
"We believe that to avoid complacency, we must constantly examine our internal processes to improve upon the positive and mitigate the negative," says president and CEO, Casey Sheahan. Mr Sheahan explains the website is designed to encourage thought and discussion. "We're highlighting exactly what happens in the manufacturing process and asking customers for their suggestions and help in efforts to find solutions to our less sustainable practices."
Director of environmental programmes, Jill Dumain, says: "The Chronicles revealed that transportation makes up only about 1% of our overall energy use. "Had we listened to the current media buzz touting transportation as the largest factor in energy consumption, we might have greatly misplaced our efforts by making strides to geographically shorten our supply chain which would have massively impacted our business financially, logistically and perhaps even effected product quality and we would only have reduced our energy savings by 1%.
Instead, we are focusing our energy on areas where we can truly make a difference right in the heart of the manufacturing process."
