Mango

How sustainable is Mango?

Man­go is a fashion brand with stores all over the world. The Spa­nish com­pa­ny shows the first signs of impro­ve­ments and com­mit­ments towards more sus­tai­nable prac­tises, but is far from it yet.

Labor rights are espe­cial­ly inter­es­ting to fur­ther inves­ti­gate with Man­go since it was one of the com­pa­nies pro­du­cing at the Rana Pla­za when a disas­ter occu­red. Though the com­pa­ny did sign the legal­ly bin­ding Ban­gla­desh Accord, in which manu­fac­tu­rers agreed to improve wor­king condi­tions in Ban­gla­desh, the com­pa­ny after­wards refu­sed to pay com­pen­sa­tion to the vic­tims. After a lot of out­side pres­sure, it did pay com­pen­sa­tion, but didn’t dis­close the amount publi­cly.

With that being said and done, it’s inter­es­ting to see where the company’s at today. At the time of the Rana Pla­za disas­ter, a lot of com­pa­nies who pro­du­ced in high-risk coun­tries did the audi­ting them­selves and since the disas­ter occu­red one of the big changes that hap­pe­ned in the fashion indus­try was the intro­duc­tion of inde­pendent third-par­ty audits that ensure pro­per labor rights in the sup­ply chain.

Since 2017, the com­pa­ny has been wor­king toge­ther with Amfo­ri, and it has imple­men­ted the Busi­ness Social Com­pliance Ini­tia­tive to improve social per­for­mance in its sup­ply chain. The orga­ni­za­tion conducts third-par­ty audits and makes sure that the wor­kers’ rights des­cri­bed in the Code of Conduct are adhe­red to. The Amfo­ri sys­tem is inter­nal and the results of the audits are not publi­shed, so what we actual­ly know about the wor­king condi­tions is very lit­tle. What we do know is that the com­pa­ny does not publish a fac­to­ry list and that its Code of Conduct does not include pay­ment of a living wage.

The com­pa­ny is star­ting to improve envi­ron­men­tal­ly. It publishes a sus­tai­na­bi­li­ty report and data on car­bon emis­sions it gene­rates year­ly, inclu­ding emis­sions in the sup­ply chain. It has off­set some of the emis­sions in its owned faci­li­ties, but there is no data pro­vi­ded on actual emis­sion and water reduc­tions and impro­ve­ments on rene­wable ener­gy usage. There is no notable tar­get to reduce emis­sions in the future either.

Mate­rial sour­cing remains lar­ge­ly unk­nown. The brand does spe­ci­fy that it used 117,672,237 m² of fibres in 2017 and that 55% of that were syn­the­tic che­mi­cal fibers and 45% had a natu­ral ori­gin. There is no infor­ma­tion about what mate­rials these exact­ly are and no per­cen­tages about if these spe­ci­fic mate­rials were sour­ced, but MAN­GO does state that the com­pa­ny pro­du­ced over 4 mil­lion gar­ments in with sus­tai­nable cha­rac­te­ris­tics in 2017, which repre­sents 3% of MANGO’s entire pro­duc­tion inclu­ding all its lines. The actual mea­ning of this last sen­tence is up to you. What is clear is that the com­pa­ny is wor­king on impro­ving the per­cen­tage of more sus­tai­nable mate­rials, and it shows in its ambi­tious tar­get for 50% more sus­tai­nable cot­ton by 2020 and a part­ner­ship with the Bet­ter Cot­ton Ini­tia­tive. The mate­rials that ori­gi­na­ted from ani­mals remain unk­nown as well.