Environment

The fashion industry has a significant role to play in accelerating or decelerating climate
change. It currently makes up more than 8% of global carbon emissions, which is more
than all international flights and maritime shipping combined. And yet, the industry is
only just beginning to reckon with how much carbon it is spewing into the atmosphere.
Only a smattering of brands has plans to tackle the problem, and even fewer are carbon
neutral.

Gucci believes that the commitment to fighting against climate change is not only
essential for safeguarding the planet, but is also essential to ensuring competitiveness.
We have implemented a worldwide, eco-friendly program designed to progressively
reduce the company’s impact on the environment.

Gucci has developed an innovative tool, the Environmental Profit & Loss (E P&L),
which makes the invisible impacts of business visible, quantifiable and comparable. We
are openly sharing the EP&L methodology we developed at Gucci so that you too can
discover the edge.

Gucci’s environmental plan includes:

 Energy saving in all Gucci stores, offices, warehouses and supply chain;
 Distribution and transportation optimization;
 Use of paper and packaging sourced from certified sustainably managed forests
(FSC);
 Reduction of waste, paper and water in all offices, warehouses, stores,
production sites and supply chain;
 Increased attention to the use and management of chemicals;
 Development of innovative environmentally-friendly materials;
 Sustainable sourcing and traceability of raw materials, in respect of nature,
biodiversity, animal welfare and local communities.

The new initiative will increase the use of renewable energy in Gucci’s operations
stores, offices and warehouses from the current 70 per cent to 100 per cent by 2020.
This transition has already achieved a reduction of around 45,800 tons of CO2 in 2018.

Marco Bizzarri, Gucci’s CEO, wants his brand to take responsibility for every last bit of
greenhouse gas it emits. Until now, the brand has been working to reduce its emissions
and offset any carbon coming out of Gucci-owned facilities. But today, Gucci
announces an ambitious new plan to become completely carbon neutral throughout its
entire supply chain.

Math aside, the fact is that the bulk of carbon emitted in most industries is released at
the earliest parts of the supply chain, in the cultivation of raw materials, rather than in
the transportation or sale of products. This means that Gucci now has the burden to both
measure and offset these emissions. For instance, Gucci must figure out how much
carbon is emitted at each of the tanneries where it buys its leather.

To do so, Gucci is relying on standards laid out by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, an
international organization that helps companies’ measure emissions.

There are three levels: The most basic, called Scope One, involves identifying emissions
on a property that the company itself owns or controls, such as their trucks, offices, and
retail stores. 

The next, called Scope Two, takes into account the emissions from the electricity the
company buys.

And Scope Three, which encompasses all of its indirect emissions through third-party
factories and suppliers.

Gucci has an in-house sustainability team that works with third-party auditors. The team
is tasked with partnering with climate researchers, including scientists from the
University of Cambridge, to stay abreast of the latest measurement tools and
mathematical models. And when it comes to offsets, they are working with
organizations such as the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standards and the
Verified Carbon Standard to audit the forest conservation projects it supports.

Many climate activists make the case that offsetting alone is not enough to avert the
worst impacts of climate change: We need to be actively reducing the amount of carbon
we produce. This has influenced Gucci’s strategy. In 2015, the company began a 10-
year program to reduce its emissions by 50%. As of this year, it has already achieved a
16% reduction. Bizzarri says that the brand has been working on many ways to reduce
its footprint, from upgrading to more energy-efficient machinery to up-cycling leather
scraps. Each of these incremental changes reduces tens of thousands of tons of carbon
from the supply chain.  

As a conclusion:

Any sustainability effort is a step in the right direction, especially given that many
brands aren’t doing anything at all to become more eco-friendly. And tackling
something like the industry’s reliance on plastic makes sense as a starting point, because
it is a relatively easy problem to address compared to the enormity of the climate
challenge. Gucci believes that fashion leaders should just jump into the fray, even
though the process sometimes feels complex and messy.

The CEO of Gucci says “The time for talking is over,”  and “At a certain point you need
to act. As a brand, you can keep getting better and fine-tuning your processes—and we
are more than happy to do that. But today is the moment to act.”