The North Face

How sustainable is The North Face?

A slow moving fashion giant

The cor­po­ra­tion was foun­ded over a cen­tu­ry ago and has kept crea­ting and acqui­ring new brands, which resul­ted into a port­fo­lio of over thir­ty well-known brands. With its acqui­si­tions of Tim­ber­land in 2011, through a two bil­lion USD deal, and ath­le­tic brand Altra in 2018, the com­pa­ny is still gro­wing. VF Cor­po­ra­tion states that it direct­ly employs over 68,000 people glo­bal­ly, and near­ly a mil­lion earn their income by making VF pro­ducts. With such a port­fo­lio, it’s no sur­prise that the mate­rials for the pro­ducts ori­gi­nate in near­ly six­ty dif­ferent coun­tries. Consi­de­ring all these big num­bers, it’s inter­es­ting to see how the com­pa­ny is tack­ling sus­tai­nable deve­lop­ment for its ope­ra­tions. Change comes slow­ly for a giant like VF. In terms of mate­rial sour­cing, it still uses uncer­ti­fied lea­ther and a large chunk of poly­es­ter and nylon are vir­gin mate­rials. Out­door appa­rel is not yet PFC-free and there’s a lot of room for impro­ve­ment concer­ning sus­tai­nable cot­ton. There are tar­gets for impro­ving these sta­tis­tics though. By 2025, the com­pa­ny wants to source 100% more sus­tai­nable cot­ton and in that same year at least 50% of their nylon and poly­es­ter has to be recy­cled. These tar­gets logi­cal­ly indi­cate that cur­rent­ly there’s a large per­cen­tage of unsus­tai­nable mate­rials being used for their products.

A start towards cli­mate action

VF’s sup­ply chain is rela­ti­ve­ly trans­pa­rent. The com­pa­ny has done a pilot in which it publi­shed tra­cea­bi­li­ty maps for some of its pro­ducts. We can also find its faci­li­ties on the Open Appa­rel Index, which offers us insight into where its gar­ments are pro­du­ced. VF Cor­po­ra­tion states that it’s wor­king on publi­shing source maps for its full sup­ply chain, which can be the step­ping stone towards full trans­pa­ren­cy concer­ning their scope 3 emis­sions. These cur­rent­ly exclude pro­duc­tion and mate­rial emis­sions, which are gene­ral­ly the big­gest chunk of emis­sions for clo­thing com­pa­nies. But even though not eve­ry­thing is tra­cked and mea­su­red yet, the mul­ti­na­tio­nal cor­po­ra­tion is taking cli­mate action. Cur­rent­ly, it’s wor­king with the Higg Index to mea­sure envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance in its own faci­li­ties to improve water effi­cien­cy and waste. VF Cor­po­ra­tion has also put Science Based Tar­gets in place, which aim to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emis­sions by 55% and Scope 3 emis­sions by 30% by 2030. There’s a com­mit­ment to pur­cha­sing 100% rene­wable ener­gy across owned and ope­ra­ted faci­li­ties by 2025, which is cur­rent­ly 14%.

An enor­mous sup­ply chain

Wor­kers’ rights are a very com­plex ele­ment for a com­pa­ny with such a huge num­ber of fac­to­ries and people who work on its pro­ducts. Pro­duc­tion takes place in a lot of risk-prone coun­tries where mal­prac­tice is always lur­king around the cor­ner. To tackle this issue, VF drew up a Code of Conduct that covers basic wor­kers’ rights, such as work­place safe­ty and maxi­mum week­ly wor­king hours. But defi­ning stan­dards in a Code of Conduct is the first step to take. What mat­ters more, is actual­ly uphol­ding these stan­dards. VF Cor­po­ra­tion states that it audi­ted 95% of fac­to­ries in 2018 (2,319 audits). These are conduc­ted either by the com­pa­ny itself or by a third par­ty. Audits conduc­ted by com­pa­nies them­selves car­ry the risk of being less trans­pa­rent about actual per­for­mance and that’s why an audit by a renow­ned third par­ty is gene­ral­ly more trust­wor­thy. While it’s great that VF Cor­po­ra­tion conducts a large num­ber of audits, the qua­li­ty of these audits and trans­pa­ren­cy concer­ning who actual­ly conducts them needs to be impro­ved. Besides that, there is no proof that VF Cor­po­ra­tion pays wor­kers a living wage.

A long road ahead

With great power comes great res­pon­si­bi­li­ty. As one of the lea­ders in the fashion indus­try, VF has the pos­si­bi­li­ty to show the entire indus­try that change is pos­sible and raise the bar for eve­ryone invol­ved. The cor­po­ra­tion is abso­lu­te­ly chan­ging for the bet­ter and, with some serious tar­gets in place, the pos­sible impact it can make is pret­ty huge. But, as it stands, this is still a com­pa­ny that has pro­du­ced in a very unsus­tai­nable man­ner for many years and has inhe­ri­ted a lot of sys­tems from pre­vious eras. So, while change is defi­ni­te­ly coming, it’s a long road ahead.