Ralph Lauren

How sustainable is Lauren Ralph Lauren?

Ralph Lau­ren mea­su­red and publi­shed its car­bon foot­print recent­ly for the first time. It accom­pli­shed this through the adop­tion of the Higg Envi­ron­men­tal Module, which cur­rent­ly allows them to fur­ther reduce car­bon emis­sions and moni­tor envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance in its sup­ply chain. The com­pa­ny has here­by achie­ved its pre­vious tar­gets of mea­su­ring its foot­print that allows for the intro­duc­tion of reduc­tion tar­gets. These tar­gets are now set and include a Science Based Tar­get to reduce its emis­sions by 30% by 2030, 100% rene­wable elec­tri­ci­ty by 2025 in its owned faci­li­ties and a 20% reduc­tion of total water usage. Ralph Lau­ren also includes a tar­get for 100% recy­clable or sus­tai­nable packa­ging by 2025 and com­plete eli­mi­na­tion of harm­ful che­mi­cals in its sup­ply chain by that same year.

Ralph Lau­ren has set tar­gets for all its mate­rials and aims to have 100% sus­tai­na­bly sour­ced 2025. All of these tar­gets are ambi­tious and indi­cate that Ralph Lau­ren is pushing for change fast. But they also indi­cate that the company’s cur­rent ope­ra­tion is lar­ge­ly unsus­tai­nable. This is par­ti­cu­lar­ly obvious for its mate­rial sour­cing. Cot­ton amounts for 82.1% of its total mate­rial sour­cing and is cur­rent­ly mere­ly 13% more sus­tai­na­bly sour­ced. Most other mate­rials the com­pa­ny sources, like poly­es­ter, vis­cose, lea­ther, cash­mere and wool, are cur­rent­ly sour­ced without cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, which is espe­cial­ly wor­ri­some for lea­ther and wool since these are prone to ani­mal cruelty.

To touch on the labor topic, the com­pa­ny does audit a large part of its sup­ply chain and states 77% of its fac­to­ries were audi­ted in 2019. It fur­ther spe­ci­fies that out of 466 audits, 333 were conduc­ted by inde­pendent third par­ties, 48 were done by Ralph Lau­ren itself, and Bet­ter Work conduc­ted 85 audits. Howe­ver, the com­pa­ny doesn’t spe­ci­fy who the third par­ties were, and it doesn’t have a mem­ber­ship with a big inde­pendent audi­tor like the Ethi­cal Tra­ding Ini­tia­tive or the Fair Labor Asso­cia­tion. More trans­pa­ren­cy is nee­ded on the topic.

The com­pa­ny shows that it wants to change rapid­ly and its ambi­tious tar­gets show that it’s serious about it. But tar­gets are also just tar­gets and there’s some serious work to be done by the com­pa­ny if it wants to achieve them.