Kering and Parsons to measure sustainability impact

Luxury conglomerate Kering is teaming up with New York’s The New School’s Parsons School of Design to create a new design course to measure sustainability impact.

The new design curriculum will leverage the Kering x Parsons: EP&L programme pilot and the My EP&L App to measure and better understand the environmental impacts of students’ creations.

As part of the collaboration, Kering is introducing new modules to Parsons Fashion programme and embedding practical lessons in sustainability into the curriculum. Parsons will offer the Kering modules to students in three senior Systems and Society Thesis sections and two Materiality Thesis sections. With students having the opportunity to study Kering’s Environmental Profit and Loss (EP&L) methodology, which measures and monetises the environmental impacts from business’ activities across the entire supply chain.

Students will also learn how to integrate sustainability from the very start of the design process by evaluating and comparing various materials’ and understanding how their choices influence the extent of the environmental impacts from sourcing to manufacturing via the My EP&L App.

Students’ thesis projects will subsequently be evaluated and scored on both design and sustainability criteria, with the ten top students given exposure for their designs in an exclusive Design Exhibition, following the course and hosted by Kering and Parsons.

The new app is based on Kering’s EP&L methodology and aims to be an easy way for design students and the fashion industry to visualise the environmental impact of a typical product from raw material extraction through to sales. The user can select one of four different items – jackets, shoes, handbags and rings, along with the raw materials used, such as cashmere, wool, organic cotton, leather, and where these are sourced from and then manufactured.

In each category the environmental impacts from carbon emissions, water use, water and air pollution, waste production and land use changes are then analysed from an underlying 5,000-plus indicators to calculate a product’s final impact. It will demonstrate how, by making small changes to designs, the environmental impact can be dramatically reduced.

“My EP&L illustrates the power of an Environmental Profit and Loss (EP&L) analysis and will assist fashion designers to easily calculate better options in real time in order to embed sustainability into their products at the very beginning of the design phase,” said Marie-Claire Daveu, Chief Sustainability Officer and Head of International institutional affairs at Kering. “As part of our ongoing commitment to advocate the importance of sustainability with the next generation entering our industry, we are excited to expand our Parsons collaboration with a view to sharing My EP&L with further educational institutions following the pilot.”