Columbia

How sustainable is Columbia?

Unfair outer­wear
We belie­ve that out­door brands car­ry an even gre­a­ter res­pon­si­bi­li­ty towards the out­doors. Most out­door brands seem to sha­re this opi­ni­on with us. The­re­fo­re, it hurts a bit more when an out­door brand is not taking big envi­ron­men­tal acti­on. Unfor­tu­na­te­ly, this is the case with Colum­bia. The com­pa­ny is sim­ply not transpa­rent about its sup­ply chain and mate­ri­al usa­ge and has yet to set any sub­stan­ti­al cli­ma­te tar­gets. Its repor­ting is main­ly incom­ple­te and does not inclu­de the rele­vant data we need to ful­ly under­stand how it is ope­ra­ting. Colum­bia does men­ti­on that it looks for sup­pliers who imple­ment ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy and car­bon emis­si­on reduc­ti­on ini­ti­a­ti­ves and that it works together with the Higg Index to impro­ve its envi­ron­men­tal per­for­man­ce. Even though it’s in pos­ses­si­on of envi­ron­men­tal data, such as ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy and car­bon emis­si­ons, the infor­ma­ti­on about the company’s per­for­man­ce is mis­sing in its repor­ting.

Not transpa­rent
The same goes for Columbia’s mate­ri­al ori­gins. The out­door brand is a Blue­sign part­ner and 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. Fur­ther infor­ma­ti­on about envi­ron­men­tal acti­on is not real­ly pro­vi­ded either. The only men­ti­on of rene­wa­ble ener­gy rela­tes to the head­quar­ters, whe­re the Ame­ri­can com­pa­ny uses a very small per­cen­ta­ge, and 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.

Baby steps
In terms of wor­kers’ rights, Colum­bia is a mem­ber of the Fair Labor Asso­ci­a­ti­on, which has an ela­bo­ra­te Code of Con­duct that gets audi­ted by third par­ties, so basic wor­kers’ rights are being upheld. They could be impro­ved through an orga­ni­sa­ti­on like the Fair Wear Foun­da­ti­on to ensu­re the pay­ment of a living wage, but the­re are no men­ti­ons of this at the moment. 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. All in all, it’s just not enough.