Italy’s most valuable luxury fashion and accessories brand has said it has become an entirely carbon neutral company.
Gucci outlined its strategy last week, which stretches from its supply chain through to its fashion shows and comprises a mixture of reduction, elimination and offsetting what it calls “unavoidable emissions”.
By incorporating its entire supply chain into its strategy, which includes external businesses such as the tanneries, chief executive, Marco Bizzarri said that the brand is targeting the part of its production that causes the most damage. The company says the early supply chain currently accounts for 90% of its greenhouse gas emissions.
Gucci will be reliant on its environmental profit and loss report to identify where greenhouse gases are being emitted so they know which areas need to be reviewed as well as finding out what needs to be offset.
It will partner with Redd+ – a UN project to reduce emissions from deforestation – on four projects that support forest conservation in Peru, Kenya, Indonesia and Cambodia to offset carbon emissions it cannot eliminate from its processes.
Bizzarri said: “If we wait to be perfect, in terms of the calculation of impact or methodology, to me it’s just an excuse for not doing it. More and more, we just need to act. We are not perfect [and] it’s not a matter of saying we are the best, it’s a matter of showing it can be done, and hopefully [others] will follow this path.”
RPA Perspective Potential ways in which technology will assist in future include lab-grown leather, which Bizzarri says currently is not of the quality or scalability the business requires. Another is an online alternative to its fashion shows. On average, 2,000 people attend its events four times a year in various locations around the world.
For its spring/summer 2020 show, due to take place in Milan next week, the brand will offset its guests’ carbon footprint and the set of the show will be reused in its shops.
“For a company like ours, there is no better way to do it than to offset,” said Bizzarri.
He stressed of the initiative that his role as CEO was to protect his staff while also trying to future-proof the group environmentally.
“The best way to have zero emissions is to close the company, but then 18,000 people will lose their jobs. When we talk about the environment, we need to keep that in mind as well,” he said.
Gucci’s environmental profit and loss initiative has been operating since 2015 as a part of its 10-year sustainability strategy, which includes reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2025. Last year its annual report showed it was on track to do so, with emissions down by 16%. In some areas, it has implemented sustainable manufacturing and sourcing initiatives that avoided 440,125 tonnes of carbon emissions in 2018.
The brand was one of 32 companies to add its name to the Fashion Pact last month. The initiative, which has been spearheaded by François-Henri Pinault, chief executive of Kering, which owns Gucci, highlighted the urgent and collaborative action required to start making a tangible impact.
This view has been reiterated by Bizzarri, who extended the invitation to protest groups such as Extinction Rebellion. The activist group has called for an end to the biannual showcase and staged a funeral at London fashion week.
