Annotations - environmental accounting

n 2014, our use of cashmere accounted for 28% of our total environmental impact – despite making up only 0.1% of our material usage. By 2016 we reduced this to 11% of our total impact, despite increasing our use of cashmere, by eliminating virgin cashmere.

EP&L is the "Environmental Profit & Loss" account model; Stella McCartney uses the methodology developed by Kering with PWC. See the EP&L reports for details.

Meanwhile, a large mining operation in the region needed biodiversity offsets to comply with performance standards required by its lender, the International Finance Corporation. By partnering across these sectors, Kering could intervene in their supply chain with additional resources from mining offset commitments, to secure a future supply of better quality cashmere while also securing the livelihoods of the herders, improving the local environment, conserving biodiversity and even enhancing the air quality of major cities almost 10,000km apart.

The mill works with purchases their raw cashmere wool from herders in Mongolia and Northern China, which is the natural habitat of cashmere goats. The yarn they produce meets the Detox Greenpeace standard, which means its free from harsh chemicals typically used in dyeing and finishing. “There is tremendous amount of greenwashing and false claims in the industry at the moment,” adds Monica. “We want to make sure our partners address both environmental and ethical aspects, from the provenance of the yarn and the way the animals are treated, to the dyeing and finishing practices, to energy and water consumption, industrial waste disposal and worker conditions.”

“The cashmere we use is totally recycled,” says Caterina Giraldi, the founder of . The brand gets all of their recycled cashmere from local businesses that would normally throw it away. Their unwanted cashmere sweaters are washed and brought back to their natural colour and original raw fibre, and that is rewoven. The spinners and knitters they work with measure their environmental impact, taking into account their water usage, energy consumption and CO2 output.

If Kering is willing to speak openly about its environmental challenges at the corporate level, its brands are often less eager to do so with consumers

The passage that follows here notes that much of this effort to achieve sustainability is actually being done quietly, since to announce this at the product level would be to draw attention to the unsustainable nature of a majority of the actual items. Hence the EP&L accounts are published at the company level.