Acne Studios

How sustainable is Acne Studios?

This scree­ning has been done by Fai­ri­fy on July 25^th 2020

Acne Stu­dios is a Swe­dish luxu­ry fashion brand that was foun­ded in 1996. The com­pa­ny shows some pro­mise for more sus­tai­nable prac­tices and is alrea­dy doing great in a few areas, but has signi­fi­cant steps to take concer­ning envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance.

The com­pa­ny hasn’t yet cal­cu­la­ted its entire foot­print and only includes emis­sions for its own ope­ra­tions in its repor­ting. It does men­tion an ambi­tion to track and reduce sup­ply chain emis­sions, but hasn’t star­ted this yet. There’s no abso­lute tar­get to reduce its scope 3 emis­sions, and, for its own ope­ra­tions, car­bon emis­sions have actual­ly increa­sed com­pa­red to the pre­vious year. It does state that it wants to reduce emis­sions from its own ope­ra­tions by 5% for the next finan­cial year.

Acne Stu­dios is not very trans­pa­rent about these envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors. The com­pa­ny does men­tion that it uses the Higg Envi­ron­men­tal Module to track envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance in its faci­li­ties, but doesn’t report the num­bers for water and ener­gy consump­tion and waste. It does report which mate­rials it uses for its gar­ments, but these are not very good. Cot­ton is used the most, wool, inclu­ding mohair, cash­mere, alpa­ca and meri­no, repre­sents the second big­gest part, and lea­ther is in third place. It’s unfor­tu­nate that Acne Stu­dios’ top three mate­rials lack most cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, which is espe­cial­ly wor­ri­some because of the ani­mal mate­rials like mohair and cash­mere. Because conven­tio­nal cot­ton has a signi­fi­cant­ly higher impact on the cli­mate and the com­pa­ny most­ly sources this over orga­nic, tra­ceable cot­ton, its cli­mate impact is signi­fi­cant­ly higher as well.

The com­pa­ny does men­tion that it’s wor­king on tra­cea­bi­li­ty and has a mem­ber­ship with the Lea­ther Wor­king Group, but cur­rent per­cen­tages are either not pro­vi­ded or very low. The usage of its recom­men­ded fibers amoun­ted to only 5 percent, which is real­ly low. Acne Stu­dios wants to use only mate­rials it clas­si­fies as ​‘Good’ or ​‘Recom­men­ded’ by 2030, and aims to increase the per­cen­tage of recy­cled mate­rials. The com­pa­ny has a lot of steps to take in terms of other envi­ron­men­tal fac­tors as well, since it cur­rent­ly does a lot of trans­port by air car­go, which has a higher impact. The Swe­dish brand doesn’t report on what mate­rials it uses for its packa­ging.

Acne Stu­dios scores points over most other luxu­ry fashion brands because it’s a mem­ber of the Fair Wear Foun­da­tion, which inde­pen­dent­ly moni­tors its sup­ply chain and makes sure that labor stan­dards are high and adhe­red to. It has been awar­ded the highest sta­tus there and is making efforts towards pay­ment of a living wage. But then again, Acne Stu­dios doesn’t publish a fac­to­ry list, which is not transparent.