Lee named exclusive denim provider for ag-tech company AppHarvest

Lee has launched a collaboration with agricultural tech company AppHarvest to be the exclusive denim provider for the company’s employees at its new high-tech greenhouse in Appalachia.

The announcement follows the opening of AppHarvest’s new 60-acre controlled environment agriculture facility in Morehead, Kentucky. “At AppHarvest, we’re reinventing American agriculture by growing up to 30 times more food in an indoor acre compared to traditional open-field farming and doing it while using 90 percent less water (and only recycled rainwater at that).

“We admire Lee’s longtime commitment to sustainability and look forward to partnering with them to show how Middle America is leading in the field,” AppHarvest Founder and CEO Jonathan Webb commented.

The apparel brand’s Indigood organic cotton denim uses a foam dyeing process with no water, 89 percent fewer chemicals and 65 percent less energy with no discharge water. Lee aims to increase its Indigood dyed products every year through 2025.

Its other global sustainability goals include powering 100 percent of its owned and operated facilities with renewable energy, sourcing 100 percent sustainably grown or recycled cotton and utilising more than 50 percent of its sustainable synthetics all by 2025.

Lee’s global head of design, Betty Madden, said in a statement: “For over 130 years, Lee has been a brand that embodies unrelenting optimism and a pioneering spirit. We are so pleased to join forces with AppHarvest, an organisation that shares our commitment to sustainability and innovation.”

Photo Credit: AppHarvest