prAna

How sustainable is prAna?

This scree­ning has been done by Fairify 

PrA­na is an out­door brand that’s part of the Colum­bia Spor­ts­wear Com­pany, an Ame­ri­can out­door com­pany that also owns Colum­bia, Sorel and Moun­tain Hard­wear. The mother com­pany only publishes one sus­tai­na­bi­lity report, which we con­sul­ted for prAna’s rating. For­tu­na­tely, the out­door brand dis­tin­guishes itself from the other affi­lia­ted brands by pro­mo­ting sus­tai­na­bi­lity on its own website.

Points for wool and cotton

PrA­na sco­res extra points on mate­rial use. For exam­ple, it uses recy­cled wool and 100% Orga­nic cot­ton, which is either OCS or GOTS cer­ti­fied. Unfor­tu­na­tely, there’s not enough trans­pa­rency con­cer­ning the other mate­rials. It’s unclear what per­cen­ta­ge of (ani­mal) mate­rials is actually cer­ti­fied. To a lar­ge extent, we still have to base our judg­ment on the sus­tai­na­bi­lity report of the parent com­pany, which also lacks transparency. 

Lack of transparency on other materials

The Colum­bia Spor­ts­wear Com­pany sta­tes that it sour­ces 50% of its mate­rials from Blue­sign cer­ti­fied faci­li­ties, but we’re in the dark con­cer­ning the other half. We see that the com­pany uses a lar­ge amount of pol­yes­ter, which is deri­ved from oil and harm­ful to the envi­ron­ment, but we have no clue about what the actual per­cen­ta­ge is. Most com­pa­nies currently inclu­de tables with per­cen­ta­ges of mate­rials being used in their repor­ting, and this pie­ce of the puzz­le is mis­sing at Colum­bia. Ani­mal mate­rials are somewhat okay: the down is cer­ti­fied through the Res­pon­si­ble Down Stan­dard and sheep mule­sing is for­bid­den, but the com­pany does use uncer­ti­fied leather.

Basic workers’ rights are upheld

PrA­na also shows that it con­si­ders human rights impor­tant, as it works together with Fair Tra­de cer­ti­fied faci­li­ties. Unfor­tu­na­tely, in this area as well, it’s unclear what per­cen­ta­ge of fac­to­ries is actually cer­ti­fied. We, again, have to con­sult the parent com­pan­y’s sus­tai­na­bi­lity report, but the Colum­bia Spor­ts­wear Com­pany is simply not trans­pa­rent about its supply chain. It’s a mem­ber of the Fair Labor Asso­cia­tion, which has an ela­bo­ra­te Code of Con­duct that gets audi­ted by third par­ties, so we can assu­me that basic wor­kers’ rights are being upheld. Howe­ver, they could be impro­ved through an orga­ni­za­tion like the Fair Wear Foun­da­tion to ensu­re pay­ment of a living wage, of which the­re are currently no mentions.

Unambitious climate action

The mother brand’s report doesn’t pro­vi­de further infor­ma­tion about envi­ron­men­tal action. The Colum­bia Spor­ts­wear Com­pany has yet to set any subs­tan­tial cli­ma­te tar­gets. Its repor­ting is incom­ple­te and doesn’t inclu­de the rele­vant data that we need to fully unders­tand its ope­ra­tion. Even though it’s in pos­ses­sion of the envi­ron­men­tal data, such as energy effi­ciency and car­bon emis­sions, it’s mis­sing in the reports. The only men­tion of rene­wa­ble energy rela­tes to the head­quar­ters, whe­re the Ame­ri­can com­pany uses a very small per­cen­ta­ge. The­re have been expe­ri­ments with bet­ter pac­ka­ging pro­jects, but they’re not really nota­ble. Ship­ping in the US always hap­pens through the UPS Car­bon Neu­tral pro­gram and a list of pro­duc­tion faci­li­ties has been published. On the upsi­de, the com­pany does men­tion that it’s loo­king for sup­pliers to imple­ment energy effi­ciency and car­bon emis­sion reduc­tion initia­ti­ves and that it works together with the Higg Index to impro­ve its envi­ron­men­tal per­for­man­ce. All in all, prA­na dis­tin­guishes itself from the other affi­lia­ted brands by offe­ring more infor­ma­tion, but it’s just not enough to posi­tion them as a sus­tai­na­ble brand.