prAna

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.