New Balance

How sustainable is New Balance?

This scree­ning has been done by Fai­rify on March 22^nd 2020

New Balan­ce is an Ame­ri­can foot- and spor­ts­wear com­pany. The brand is not trans­pa­rent about its ope­ra­tions. The infor­ma­tion that the com­pany pro­vi­des, is mostly out­da­ted and lacks rele­vant num­bers that can help us deter­mi­ne if the com­pany is making deci­sions for the better.

It’s not enough

The com­pany publishes a brief sus­tai­na­bi­lity report and offers some infor­ma­tion on its web­si­te whe­re it offers a peak into its sus­tai­na­bi­lity world. For exam­ple, it sta­tes that it is wor­king on redu­cing the ave­ra­ge car­bon emis­sions per pair of shoes and that it has set a tar­get for this. Water and energy use per pair are to be impro­ved as well. Howe­ver, the com­pany also sta­tes that it has not trac­ked sco­pe 3 emis­sions and that it is still wor­king on esta­blishing trac­king and repor­ting sys­tems. Without pro­per trac­king and repor­ting sys­tems in its supply chain, this seems like a very hard thing to actually do right. We have no insight into true car­bon emis­sions, water or energy usa­ge or any real reduc­tion targets.

Red flags about labor conditions and animals

The­se are logi­cal mis­sing pie­ces of the puzz­les if New Balan­ce has yet to start mea­su­ring. Neverthe­less, the lack of trans­pa­rency is nota­ble in every part of the company’s repor­ting. The Ame­ri­can brand has a his­tory with pro­duc­tion in the Uni­ted Sta­tes and the Uni­ted King­dom and whi­le it doesn’t publish a supply chain list on the Open Appa­rel Index, it doesn’t actually offer us any insights into how big the per­cen­ta­ge of local pro­duc­tion actually is. Further­mo­re, we gain no wis­dom about how the com­pany is taking care of wor­kers in the­se fac­to­ries. Its code of con­duct notes the most basic wor­king rights, but doesn’t inclu­de collec­ti­ve bar­gai­ning, a very impor­tant prin­ci­ple. The­re are also no men­tions of third-party audits. The­se are both major red flags in terms of labor rights. The com­pany does ban a few ani­mal mate­rials, but doesn’t do nearly enough to ensu­re ani­mal wel­fa­re. Sus­tai­na­bi­lity isn’t com­ple­tely off the agen­da, it’s pro­bably on the­re and New Balan­ce must be making some impro­ve­ments. Howe­ver, we currently have no infor­ma­tion about how the brand is doing envi­ron­men­tally and we have no clue whether it takes res­pon­si­bi­lity over ani­mal wel­fa­re and wor­kers’ rights in its supply chain. If New Balan­ce is truly serious about posi­ti­ve chan­ge, we need way more trans­pa­rency than it currently provides.

Old Id: 199775<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>