SeaVees

How sustainable is SeaVees?

This scree­ning has been done by Fai­ri­fy on June 12^th 2020

Sea­Vees is a Cali­for­ni­an casu­al foot­wear brand that’s been around sin­ce the ​‘60s and is a mem­ber of 1% pla­net. It’s owned by Bri­tish Pentland Group sin­ce 1995, a glo­bal fas­hi­on com­pa­ny that owns about twel­ve brands. The group publis­hes a year­ly sustai­na­bi­li­ty report that covers all of the­se brands. Unfor­tu­na­te­ly, this report doesn’t offer much rele­vant infor­ma­ti­on.

It remains lar­ge­ly unknown whe­re the company’s mate­ri­als ori­gi­na­te. The com­pa­ny sta­tes to work with blue­sign and Oeko-Tex to res­pon­si­bly mana­ge che­mi­cals, but doesn’t offer any infor­ma­ti­on about what mate­ri­als it’s using in its pro­duc­ti­on pro­cess. Whe­ther the com­pa­ny uses more sustai­na­ble mate­ri­als like orga­nic cot­ton or any recy­cled mate­ri­als, remains unknown and sug­gests that the­se per­cen­ta­ges are very low. It does sta­te that 60% of its cur­rent mate­ri­als are sour­ced from pre­fer­red sup­pliers, which is a very gene­ric sta­te­ment. On sour­cing of ani­mal mate­ri­als, the com­pa­ny sta­tes that it uses lea­ther, down and fea­thers in line with indu­stry best prac­ti­ces and that it’s a mem­ber of the Lea­ther Wor­king Group. But actu­al per­cen­ta­ges of cer­ti­fied ver­sus non-cer­ti­fied mate­ri­al are not spe­ci­fied, which rai­ses con­cerns about ani­mal wel­fa­re in its sup­ply chain.

The com­pa­ny is not obli­vious to cli­ma­te acti­on and has a tar­get for cut­ting emis­si­ons by 25% by 2025 and aims to achie­ve car­bon neu­tra­li­ty by 2050. But becau­se Pentland Group doesn’t report on sup­ply chain emis­si­ons and cur­rent envi­ron­men­tal per­for­man­ce, it see­ms very far away from achie­ving this goal. It does report that JD Sports, its sports and shoes retai­ler, per­forms well on the Car­bon Dis­clo­su­re Pro­ject, but doesn’t pro­vi­de rele­vant infor­ma­ti­on for its enti­re ope­ra­ti­ons. The repor­ting sty­le of the com­pa­ny is very frag­men­ted and see­ms to cher­ry-pick the posi­ti­ves from each brand, lea­ving out fac­tu­al infor­ma­ti­on of its enti­re ope­ra­ti­ons, which is frankly unfair and not transpa­rent. What we can tell is that Pentland Group has adop­ted the Higg Modu­le in 13% of its fac­to­ries, which is a start to mea­su­ring and impro­ving envi­ron­men­tal per­for­man­ce of its fac­to­ries and an impor­tant step towards cal­cu­la­ting its car­bon foot­print.

Pentland Group is a mem­ber of the Ethi­cal Tra­ding Ini­ti­a­ti­ve, which con­ducts inde­pen­dent audits for the com­pa­ny, and has part­ne­red with ACT to impro­ve living wages in its sup­ply chain. Des­pi­te the­se mem­ber­ships, the lack of transpa­ren­cy con­ti­nues in its repor­ting about soci­al audits. The com­pa­ny sta­tes it con­duc­ted 104 audits in 2018, sixteen of which were con­duc­ted by Bet­ter Work. Who con­duc­ted the other 88 audits is unspe­ci­fied. Becau­se the com­pa­ny only publis­hes its tier 1 sup­plier list, which yields 188 results, it appe­ars that there’s a part of com­ple­te­ly unau­di­ted fac­to­ries in its sup­ply chain. Pentland Group does sha­re the results of the con­duc­ted audits and from the 104 con­duc­ted audits it iden­ti­fied 21 zero tole­ran­ce issues in 2018 and 31% of instan­ces were clas­si­fied as cri­ti­cal. The cul­mi­na­ti­on of the­se facts rai­ses serious con­cerns about labor rights in the company’s sup­ply chain.

Pentland Group does make an effort to give back to com­mu­ni­ties and gives at least 1% of net pro­fits after taxes to cha­ri­ties each year, which is gre­at, but the­re are cur­rent­ly some serious con­cerns about how the com­pa­ny ope­ra­tes. We hope more transpa­ren­cy and more impro­ve­ments are made in 2020.

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