Gucci goes carbon neutral

To build on longstanding efforts to reduce environmental impacts and drive positive change, Gucci is offsetting all remaining Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions annually from its own operations and the entire supply chain through four critically important REDD+ projects that support forest conservation around the world. As an unprecedented commitment to sustainability leadership in luxury and fashion, Gucci’s supply chain has become carbon neutral.

Gucci has been operationally embedding its long-term sustainability strategy into the business over the last few years, and has taken this next ambitious step to become entirely carbon neutral in recognition that additional measures are immediately required given the urgent need for climate action. As part of a comprehensive approach to account for all its GHG emissions associated with its business activities, Gucci has implemented a hierarchy of actions to avoid, reduce, restore and offset its GHG emissions. In doing so, Gucci is establishing a new pathway to carbon neutrality highlighting the necessity for businesses to be responsible and accountable for all the emissions across their supply chains.

Transparency underpins Gucci’s approach and the company will continue to measure and monitor its full environmental impacts through its annual Environmental Profit and Loss (EP&L) account. Gucci was one of the first luxury brands to adopt the EP&L, which acts as a benchmark to measure progress during the implementation of Gucci’s 10-year sustainability strategy which was implemented in 2015. A series of 2025 targets were created as a driver of this strategy against a 2015 EP&L baseline, including an objective to reduce GHG emissions by 50 percent. Gucci’s most recent EP&L for 2018 shows that the company is on track to attain its targets, having already achieved a 16 percent reduction of its overall footprint across its supply chain since 2015, relative to growth. Within this context, GHG emissions were also reduced by 16 percent and currently account for 35 percent of Gucci’s total footprint. Significantly, the supply chain is responsible for the bulk of these emissions (around 90 percent) as is generally the case with all luxury fashion companies. Gucci has made significant inroads in line with its targets over the last few years and with its new carbon neutral approach, the company will continue to focus on avoiding and reducing its GHG emissions as a priority to reach its target by 2025, while also recognizing that there are unavoidable emissions beyond this scope of action that must be proactively addressed.

As the first priority in its carbon neutral approach, Gucci has implemented a series of initiatives around low-impact alternative and sustainable materials, sustainable sourcing, and manufacturing efficiencies to avoid and reduce its impacts across the supply chain. These initiatives have already shown promising results by avoiding around 440,125 tons of CO2 in 2018 and they will be continuously amplified. Then, on an annual basis as a final measure to enhance these efforts, Gucci will offset the remaining GHG emissions across the entire supply chain supporting the conservation and restoration of vital ecosystems around the world.