Calvin Klein

How sustainable is Calvin Klein?

This screening has been done by Fairify on May 18^th 2020

The Cal­vin Klein brand is a fashion giant in itself, having the brands CK Cal­vin Klein, Cal­vin Klein, Cal­vin Klein Jeans, Cal­vin Klein Under­wear and Cal­vin Klein Per­for­mance under its wings. These Cal­vin Klein brands pro­duce almost eve­ry piece of clo­thing you can think of and also make fra­grances, eye­wear, watches and jewel­ry. The desi­gner, Cal­vin Klein, built the com­pa­ny from the ground up until he sold it to PVH Corp in 2002. This mother com­pa­ny now publishes a year­ly trans­pa­ren­cy report that covers all of its brands.

PVH Cor­po­ra­tion is a huge Ame­ri­can com­pa­ny with a brand port­fo­lio of about ten brands, of which Tom­my Hil­fi­ger and Cal­vin Klein are the big­gest. PVH gene­rates a reve­nue of almost 10 bil­lion USD annual­ly. PVH has ack­now­led­ged the pro­blems in the fashion indus­try and adop­ted a stra­te­gy to do its part, cal­led For­ward Fashion. This consists of ambi­tious tar­gets to posi­ti­ve­ly change the way its clo­thing is manu­fac­tu­red. For­ward fashion is made up of three pillars: com­ple­te­ly redu­cing impacts to zero, impro­ving the lives of eve­ryone in its sup­ply chain and increa­sing its posi­tive impacts.

To soli­di­fy its ambi­tion, the com­pa­ny has part­ne­red with nume­rous orga­ni­sa­tions. As a mem­ber of the Sus­tai­nable Appa­rel Coa­li­tion, PVH uses the Higg Index to mea­sure envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance in its fac­to­ries. With the adop­tion of Science Based Tar­gets, it aims to reduce car­bon emis­sions by 71% for its scope 1 and 2 and sup­ply chain emis­sions by 30% by 2030. It reports year­ly emis­sions through the Car­bon Dis­clo­sure Pro­ject and has made a com­mit­ment with the RE100 ini­tia­tive for 100% rene­wable ener­gy by 2030. PVH’s part­ner­ship with ZDHC helps it eli­mi­nate harm­ful che­mi­cals in its pro­duc­tion pro­cess.

With no lack of ambi­tion present at the com­pa­ny, these still remain tar­gets and what’s more rele­vant is how the com­pa­ny is doing today. There is signi­fi­cant room for impro­ve­ment in terms of trans­pa­ren­cy concer­ning mate­rial sour­cing, since this is gene­ral­ly one of the fac­tors that accounts for the lar­gest cli­mate impact. The com­pa­ny does dis­close the amounts of mate­rials, which shows that the main mate­rial is cot­ton, of which 37% was more sus­tai­nable like orga­nic or recy­cled cot­ton. Other mate­rials the clo­thing brand uses are syn­the­tic mate­rials like poly­es­ter, nylon and sili­cone. Of its poly­es­ter use, only 10.5% was recy­cled and use of ani­mal mate­rials out­side of down, which is cer­ti­fied, is not men­tio­ned and can be more trans­pa­rent. Without pro­per dis­clo­sure about which ani­mal mate­rials are being used and whe­ther the com­pa­ny has cer­ti­fi­ca­tions for those mate­rials, there remains a sub­stan­tial risk of ani­mal abuse in the sup­ply chain.

What PVH does well in terms of trans­pa­ren­cy, is dis­clo­sing its envi­ron­men­tal data. Its last known scope 3 emis­sions are 2,713,907 metric tonnes of CO2 and the com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly uses 28% rene­wable ener­gy to run its offices, ware­houses and stores. For its sup­ply chain this per­cen­tage is 10%. Total water use is cur­rent­ly 92,521,783.5 cubic meters. Num­bers like these are pos­sible to cal­cu­late because the com­pa­ny uses the Higg Index and it’s great to see them publi­shed. PVH has also repor­ted its tier 1 fac­to­ries, which can be found on the Open Appa­rel Regis­try. The trans­pa­ren­cy is great on the envi­ron­men­tal part, but there are a lot of impro­ve­ments to be made here. The num­bers are signi­fi­cant and the com­pa­ny has yet to adopt mea­sures against poly­bags.

In 2018, the com­pa­ny joi­ned ACT, which is an orga­ni­za­tion that helps com­pa­nies move towards pay­ment of a living wage in their sup­ply chain. PVH is no mem­ber of a large inde­pendent body that conducts audits in its fac­to­ries, but does work toge­ther with orga­ni­za­tions like Bet­ter Work to improve wor­king condi­tions. Even though Bet­ter Work conducts some audits for the com­pa­ny, most of the audits are done by PVH itself and while the com­pa­ny does offer a map with how the fac­to­ries are rated, reports on the results and the conduc­tors of these audits remains behind clo­sed doors. A mem­ber­ship with an inde­pendent orga­ni­za­tion that conducts inde­pendent third-par­ty audits can sub­stan­tial­ly reduce the risks of labor rights being vio­la­ted and would be a first step towards serious­ly impro­ving the lives of the people wor­king in the company’s sup­ply chain.

It’s refre­shing to see a big com­pa­ny like PVH Cor­po­ra­tion taking mat­ters into its own hands and taking owner­ship over what hap­pens in its sup­ply chain. Undoub­ted­ly, it’s rea­li­sing that the consu­mer wants to know how its pro­ducts are made and are the­re­fore chan­ging for the bet­ter. The com­pa­ny has alrea­dy made signi­fi­cant gains in terms of trans­pa­ren­cy and shows its ambi­tion in its adop­ted tar­gets. But behind all these tar­gets and sty­lish repor­ting, things start to break apart and reveal serious risks in its sup­ply chain. PVH remains a very large and unsus­tai­nable com­pa­ny that pro­duces all over the world. We ful­ly sup­port its new mis­sion and have no doubt the com­pa­ny will bet­ter them­selves. But there’s bet­ter brands out there, who have been built from the ground up with sus­tai­na­bi­li­ty in mind.