Following in the wake of Zara's capitulation, Levi’s is now the 11th brand to bow to pressure from Greenpeace's global Detox campaign. The denim giant has committed to eliminate releases of all hazardous chemicals throughout its supply chains and products. Still being pressured: Calvin Klein, Gap, and Victoria’s Secret as part of the green campaigner's goal “to expose brands until the use - and abuse - of hazardous substances is totally eliminated.” 

The world’s largest denim brand, has agreed to eliminate all releases of hazardous chemicals throughout its entire supply chain and products by 2020. The commitment comes eight days after Greenpeace launched its “Toxic Threads: Under Wraps” report targeting global fashion brands releasing toxins in Mexico's rivers, resulting in a digital groundswell with more than 210,000 people calling on Levi’s to Detox, tens of thousands taking action on Facebook and Twitter, and over 700 people protesting outside Levi’s shop fronts in over 80 cities worldwide.

As part of its Zero Discharge Commitment, Levi’s (as outlined in a blog post) will start requiring 15 of its largest suppliers in China, Mexico and elsewhere in the Global South to disclose pollution data as early as June 2013, followed by compliance from 25 additional major suppliers by the end of 2013.Continue reading...

Having taken Zara to task as part of its Detox/Toxic Threads campaign, Greenpeace is now turning the spotlight on the Levi’s brand.

This week, the eco-activists rolled out a multimedia campaign that included bringing 16 living mannequins to stage a protest outside the brand’s flagship store in San Francisco. Their demand: that the world’s largest maker of jeans (with sales of $4.8 billion in 2011) eliminate hazardous chemicals from their supply chain. The tactics: turning the denim giant's global Go Forth "marketing platform"— which was inspired by Walt Whitman's "O Pioneers" poem — against the brand.

Campaigners are using the language of "Go Forth" against the brand. Greenpeace is mimicking its graphic style and hashtag (#goforth) with its own #detox tag for a "#GoForth and #Detox!" message. The platform's "This is our time" tagline has turned into "Now is Your Time," in addition to co-opting other Levi's brand attributes (see the Pinterest/Facebook-ready "501 reasons to detox" infographic, below) to encourage the company to live up to its high-minded, noble mesaging.

Levi's is listening.Continue reading...

Fashion retailers are embracing sustainability with ever-widening arms, becoming increasingly accountable for the byproducts their industry creates. With their latest moves, H&M and Marks & Spencer (M&S as it's better known) are leading the rack-pack.

Following in the footsteps of the UK-wide recycling push launched by M&S earlier this year, H&M is planning to launch the world’s first global clothing collective initiative, to be introduced in all of its 48 markets in February.

According to the fast-fashion retailer's press release, “Any pieces of clothing, from any brand and in any condition are accepted. In return, the customer will receive a voucher for each bag brought. The collected clothes are then handled by H&M’s partner, I:Collect, which provides the infrastructure in which consumer goods are repeatedly reprocessed and made available for new use."

“Our sustainability efforts are rooted in a dedication to social and environmental responsibility. We want to do good for the environment, which is why we are now offering our customers a convenient solution: to be able to leave their worn out or defective garments with H&M,” stated H&M CEO Karl-Johan Persson.

No value was stated for the voucher H&M is offering in return for donations to in-store collection boxes to be processed by I:CO, as its Swiss recycling partner is branded; its tagline is "Rethink. Recycle. Reward."Continue reading...

Businesses and brands are increasingly beholden to healthy communities and constituents for their bottom-line growth.

Coca-Cola just released its ninth annual Sustainability Report and second Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Report, making the point that sustainability and corporate citizenship aren't sidebars to the company. "We're working to embed sustainability-minded innovations into every aspect of our business, from sourcing ingredients to increasing beverage options to aspiring to be water neutral and recovering packages for recycling," stated Muhtar Kent, Coca-Cola's CEO.

"Coca-Cola is intent on growing our business by making a difference wherever our business touches the world and the world touches our business,” added Bea Perez, the company’s first Chief Sustainability Officer, who was hired in July 2011.

The company's Sustainability Report is presented as a fully interactive website (tagline: "Every bottle has a story") features videos, social media capabilities, third-party opinions on global challenges and an updated digital design accessible through smartphones, tablets and mobile devices.Continue reading...

What brand doesn't want to look environmentally conscious and earth-friendly? And we're not just talking about the predicted rise in plug-in hybrid cars for Ford and Toyota or the recent increase in vegetarian and vegan businesses. Now mass-market pharmacy Walgreens is getting into the act.

The drug store chain this week launched its own Ology brand that features 25 environmentally friendly products, such as “tissues, toilet paper and paper towels made from bamboo and cane sugar husks instead of tree pulp” as well as “laundry detergent with fewer chemicals than regular brands, shampoos and conditioners for both children and adults, compact fluorescent light bulbs, and glass and all-purpose household cleaners,” according to Crain's Chicago Business.

"There's a growing trend of moms and households looking for safer products with fewer chemicals," Maurice Alkemade, Walgreen's VP of retail brands and global sourcing, told Crain's. "A lot of national brands are pushing to take out these chemicals, but we're the first affordable and widely available line to do it. We believe we can lead and own this platform."Continue reading...

In 2010 Volvo launched a green living experiment, called One Tonne Life, to see if one family could learn to live more sustainably. That experiment, which involved other Swedish brands (Siemens, A-hus, Vattenfall, ICA), saw the Lindell family adopt a low-impact lifestyle that reduced their carbon dioxide emissions from 7.3 tonnes per year, the Swedish average for a family, to 1.5 tonnes — just shy of the one tonne goal of the project.

Now Unilever is running a UK-wide consumer challenge with 12 families to see if they can lead more sustainable lifestyles and save money on household bills. The goal is to address food waste, according to the press release for Unilever’s Sustain Ability Challenge.

Developed in partnership with The Futures Company, the challenge aims to bust the myth that it costs more to live in an environmentally-friendly fashion. The Futures Company's recent survey of 1,975 UK consumers found that seven out of 10 (68 per cent) identified the main barrier to living a more environmentally-conscious lifestyle is that it costs more — a myth that Unilever wants to overturn.

“We know that nearly 70 per cent of our environmental impact occurs when consumers use our products at home so changing consumer behaviour is one of the biggest challenges we face in achieving our Sustainable Living Plan goals," commented Amanda Sourry, chairman of Unilever UK and Ireland.Continue reading...

IKEA was the poster-brand for banning disposable shopping bags in American retail, and that early commitment keeps growing and getting greener.

The IKEA Group has just announced an ambitious sustainability strategy, People & Planet Positive (as seen above), as a brand striving for energy independence. Their commitment is to produce as much energy as they consume by 2020 through a $1.95 billion investment in solar and wind projects.

In the near term, as outlined in its sustainability microsite and report, the mega-furniture retailer plans to gather 70% of its energy demands from renewable energy sources by 2015, leveraging wind farms in six European countries that generated 152 gigawatt hours of electricity last year, about 12% of the total needed for its stores and distribution centers. 

“The People and Planet Positive plan is designed to protect the company from price shocks and tap into customers' desire for a greener lifestyle," the Guardian reports. "Alongside its energy and resource goals, the plan commits the company to helping Ikea's 770 million customers save money through the use of more efficient products, improving sustainability throughout its supply chain, and supporting human rights and education efforts.”Continue reading...

In 2011, the Levi's brand released 1.5 million pairs of Water‹Less jeans, which will increase to 29 million by year-end for a savings of 360 million liters of water to date. Now it's taking its sustainability efforts to the proverbial garbage dump, with a new Waste<Less denim collection that will, once again, put the world's largest maker of jeans worldwide (sales of $4.8 billion in 2011) at the forefront of sustainable brands.

Part of the Levi's Spring 2013 collection launching in January, the Waste‹Less denim collection will comprise about 400,000 men’s and women’s jeans and jean jackets made of eight crushed brown and green plastic bottles per pair and composed of at least 20% recycled plastic, in a process that reused about 3.5 million bottles and saved enough water to fill 144 Olympic-size swimming pools.

“This collection proves that you don’t have to sacrifice quality, comfort or style to give an end a new beginning,” stated James Curleigh, global president of the Levi's brand. “We don’t just want to reduce our impact on the environment, we want to leave it better than we found it.”Continue reading...