Kering commits to full carbon neutrality

The luxury brands owned by the Kerig group include Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, Bottega Veneta, Boucheron, Brioni and Pomellato.

Kering’s commitment is an extension of its annual offsetting approach that has been established since 2011 and initially incorporated Scopes 1 and 2 of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Since then, Kering has been leveraging its pioneering Environmental Profit and Loss (EP&L) accounting to analyse the Group’s GHG emissions up to the base of the supply chain, where raw materials are created. This comprehensive data has enabled Kering’s houses to put in place customised supply chain initiatives and efficiency programmes to effectively avoid and reduce its emissions.

Furthermore, Kering set a Science-Based Target (approved by the SBT initiative) to reduce all its GHG emissions related to its own operations and supply chain by 50 per cent by 2025 (from a 2015 baseline).

A number of key sustainability initiatives have already supported the Group’s SBT. These include: implementing the Kering Standards for Raw Materials and Manufacturing Processes outlining best practices and sustainability requirements, which delivers more than 20 per cent of the overall SBT reduction target; focusing on becoming more energy efficient in the Group’s operations, which has led to the reduction of 30 per cent carbon intensity in the Group’s stores since 2015; and increasing the conversion to renewable energy to meet its 100 per cent commitment for the Group.

While these efforts to avoid and reduce its footprint across the supply chain will continue to be focused on as a priority, Kering is now offsetting all the remaining annual emissions in Scope 3 of the GHG Protocol as well.

For 2018, and as published in the EP&L results, the total remaining GHG emissions offset for the Group will be approximately 2.4 million tons CO2E.

“When it comes to climate change, we can no longer wait to take real action. We all need to step up as businesses and account for the GHG emissions that we generate in total. Kering is committing to become completely carbon neutral as a Group across all our operations and supply chains. While we focus on avoiding and reducing our GHG emissions to meet our Science-Based Target, we will offset all our remaining emissions and support the conservation of vital forests and biodiversity around the world,” said François-Henri Pinault, chairman and CEO of Kering.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RKS)