Stella McCartney and Sustainability

ENVIRONMENTAL PROFIT AND LOSS

The Environmental Profit and Loss (EP&L) is a form of natural capital accounting that measures and monetises the negative and positive impacts on the environment generated by a company’s activities – not just within its own operations, but also across all of its supply chains.

It is an innovative tool that goes far beyond traditional environmental reporting, enabling Stella McCartney to make better decisions. It provides the brand with a clear quantified understanding of its environmental impacts; Stella McCartney uses it to inform its product design, sourcing decisions, manufacturing, and research and development.

The EP&L analyses six major categories of environment impact (greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, water pollution, water consumption, waste, and changes in ecosystem services associated with land use change) across all of Stella McCartney's supply chain and its own operations, starting with the production of raw materials through to the sale of products to the customer.

LEATHER VS. POLYESTER

Stella McCartney is a vegetarian brand that has never used leather, fur or skins in our products. This is a decision that Stella McCartney has always stood by both for ethical and environmental reasons and the EP&L for the wider Kering business that does use leather has helped to further highlight the environmental impact leather has. Through the EP&L we have been able to directly compare the impact of the synthetic alternatives that the brand uses to the impacts of leather use.

Leather impacts are driven by land use and greenhouse gas emissions associated with animal rearing, as well as the energy use and water consumption requirements of tanneries.

In Brazil for example, the cattle industry has been a driver of deforestation – resulting in a loss of important ecosystem services. Additionally, it is inefficient in terms of production per hectare. As a result, leather from Brazil has very high environmental impact per kg, as shown in the video, when compared to synthetic alternatives.

REGENERATED CASHMERE

Cashmere has the highest impact environmentally out of all the raw materials Stella McCartney uses in its production chain – roughly 100 times the environmental impact of wool. As a result, the brand has ceased to use virgin cashmere in its knitwear collections and has begun using a regenerated cashmere yarn instead called Re.VersoTM made from post-factory waste in Italy. The regenerated cashmere has an 87% reduction in environmental impact when compared to virgin cashmere.

It takes 4 goats to produce enough fiber to make a single cashmere sweater – compare that to wool, where 1 sheep produces enough fiber to make up to 5 sweaters.

Cashmere has therefore traditionally been considered a luxury fiber; however, today casual cashmere products are widely available as affordable goods. This increase in the global demand for cashmere has resulted in an increase in the goat population, which is destroying the grasslands in Mongolia.

SUSTAINABLE VISCOSE

In 2014, Stella McCartney partnered with the NGO Canopy and made a commitment to ensure that all of its cellulose fabrics (viscose) meet strict sustainability standards by 2017.

Stella McCartney wanted to ensure that the raw materials used to make the brand's fabrics neither contributed to the loss of ancient and endangered forests nor originated from other controversial sources.

As of the Spring 2017 collection, Stella McCartney has met this commitment. All of the brand's viscose for RTW is coming from sustainably certified forests in Sweden – processed in Germany and fabrics are made in Italy, a fully European supply chain.

Stella McCartney's supply chain starts with a sustainably managed and certified forest in Sweden. The pulp goes from Sweden to Germany where it is turned into the high quality viscose filament that the brand uses. The filament is then sent to Italy where it is turned into Stella McCartney's fabrics. Each year more than 120 million trees are logged solely for fabric production.

The need for urgent change is compelling and abundantly clear. Cellulosic fabrics such as viscose and lyocell are a direct product of trees cut down exclusively to feed dissolving pulp mills. Forest ecosystems affected include the northern Boreal Forests of Canada and Russia, Coastal Temperate Rainforests of western North America, and the Tropical Rainforests of Indonesia, South East Asia and Brazil.