SDG Decoded: SDG #13 – Climate Action
In our next edition of SDG Decoded, in which we measure the ways the denim industry is delivering on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, we’re turning our attention to #13: Climate Action.
Whether it’s through reducing energy usage or aggressive recycling initiatives, all of the companies we talked with are taking ambitious steps to downgrade their eco footprint.
Read on to learn what Naveena, Global Denim, Lucky and Kipas are doing in the name of greener denim.
Naveena Denim Mills
Carved in Blue: How are you tackling SDG #13?
Aydan Tuzun, executive director of global sales and marketing: We have been recently aligning our strategies with the SDGs and have signed the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) to further reinforce our pledge to sustainability and promoting change in the industry.
With this signature, we commit ourselves to respecting human rights, providing a safe and decent working environment, protecting the environment, applying policies and practices that ensure transparent corporate management, and providing our employees and society with sustainable value and benefits.
Carved in Blue: How do you see this shaping up for 2020?
Aydan: Our aim is to deliver high-quality innovative products relevant to today’s and tomorrow’s consumers while driving change for a sustainable future. Signing the UNGC and aligning our activities with SDGs is indicative of this mindset. We believe that the UNGC membership will provide the opportunity to be further and intensively involved in SDG initiatives.
Global Denim
Carved in Blue: How are you tackling SDG #13?
Anatt Finkler, creative director: We understand that true impactful change takes time, but it all starts in small steps across all channels. Our water treatment plant located inside our mill converts wastewater into an effluent that can be either reused for different purposes (like irrigation) or returned to the water supply with minimal environmental issues.
We have better use of CO2 programs, chemical recovery programs, waste-reduction programs, care for green areas, and a strict constant maintenance of the plant to ensure its clean operation.
Global Denim has also made several programs to tackle climate action and create better denim fabric, saving water, chemicals and energy. Our Zero Water discharge dyeing program is called Ecolojean. This program started a few years ago, and every single day we get to include more colors and more fabrics into the program to ensure our denim is dyed with the least water as possible. Also, our Clean Indigo program uses the most highly awarded indigo on the market to ensure its good ecological footprint.
Our most recent Ecoloop program is set to kickstart a circular economy model where we are recycling pre-consumer denim, our floor scraps, and our customers’ and partners’ denim waste to transform it into new cotton yarn and create new denim out of it. We have invested millions of dollars toward this initiative, expanded our mill and added a 14,000-square-meter facility dedicated toward it.
Lastly, inside Global Denim´s Group is our own plastic recycling plant, located in Lerma, Toluca, in Mexico. We recycle post-industrial and post-consumer plastic materials—that would usually end up in landfills or oceans—and produce plastic pellets that will later turn into new products. We also generate recycled plastic bags for supermarket and drugstore use, as well as non-food-safe-grade plastic containers, for different companies.
Carved in Blue: What does this goal mean for your company?
Anatt: This means everything for our company, as only with change, commitment and investments can true progress be achieved. Sustainability has to be everyone’s top of mind when it comes to this industry, and leaving a better planet than the one we came to has to be our ultimate goal. Every step counts, and every effort leaves a mark. We have to continue down this path to clean the denim industry and ultimately reshape the ecological course the world is heading into.
Carved in Blue: How do you see this shaping up for 2020?
Anatt: We can only see this becoming stronger and stronger. 2019 was a year of commitments, lots of conversation and a slow start. 2020 has to be the year of change, where we hope to see lots more innovation, initiatives starting, new technologies being adopted, and more people involved and passionate about it.
Lucky
Carved in Blue: How are you tackling SDG #13?
Allison Charalambous, senior manager of sustainability and social responsibility: We have been undergoing a year-long process to bring our corporate operations up to compliance with the guidelines of the Los Angeles Green Business Program. A team of 22 electricians from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power replaced our fluorescent lights with LEDs in two office locations through LADWP’s Commercial Direct Install Program. This switch reduces our energy consumed on lighting.
Overall, employees have responded very positively to the changes that have reduced our corporate operations footprint.
Kipas
Carved in Blue: How are you tackling SDG #13?
Halit Gümüşer, member of board: Fifty percent of our production is made with sustainable resources, and our goal is to use 100 percent in 2025. Kipas’ spinning mill is committed to improving cotton farming practices globally. We are the third largest manufacturer of the world, and we have over 25,000 metric tons BCI cotton consumption annually. Our goal is to use 50,000 metric tons of BCI cotton in 2020. Kipas also has a GOTS certificate for the use of organic fibers, including ecological and social criteria.
By working with Lenzing, Kipas produces fabric with cellulose-based fibers to tailor a sustainable lifestyle such as LENZING™ ECOVERO™, TENCELTM and REFIBRATM technology.
We have a strategic partnership with Unifi for their Repreve® fibers made out recycled PET bottles. We recycled 55 million bottles in just one year, and we also recycle 100 percent of waste (pre-consumer and post-industrial) in our cotton fibers. In addition, Kipaş adds at least 5 percent post-consumer recycled cotton to all its new developed fabrics, including denim. Starting from fall/winter 2020/2021 we will increase the percentage gradually up to 25 percent in 2025.
By participating in the Ellen MacArthur’s Jeans Redesign Project, we emphasize our determination to contribute to a circular economy by transforming the way denim is designed and produced.
Through our conscious production system with environmentally friendly methods and the latest recycling technologies, we are tackling waste and pollution. In fact, Kipaş’s recycled Denim by Denim fabrics are produced with zero water and zero chemicals. [We have] 42 percent wastewater recycling (100 percent by 2025), and [have] decreased carbon emissions by 97 percent by switching to renewable energy. We aim to become a carbon positive company by 2025.
Carved in Blue: What does this goal mean for your company?
Halit: Being part of an industry that has a significant impact on climate change, natural resources and human rights, we have the opportunity to become part of the solution. By constantly optimizing our operations, and by seeking innovative solutions and collaborations across the whole value chain, we believe real change happens. At Kipas, we embrace the SDGs as a framework to ensure a more resilient textile value chain and also provide a universal construct for taking action as an industry.