PVH Corp lays out zero waste, zero carbon vision

PVH Corp, the US-based owner of Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Van Heusen and a slew of other global fashion brands, has announced a new corporate responsibility strategy centred on sustainability.

Dubbed ‘Fashion Forward’, the three-pronged plan involves reducing the company’s negative impacts to zero, increasing its positive impacts to 100 per cent and improving the lives of more than one million people across its value chain.

The company laid out 15 priorities across the three areas and set a key target for each in a digital hub dedicated to the Fashion Forward strategy to ensure accountability and transparency going forward.

Some of these priorities include eliminating carbon emissions, with the goal of powering all PVH offices, warehouses and stores by 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2030, and reducing emissions in the supply chain by 30 per cent by 2030, and achieving zero waste and eliminating single-use plastics in all offices, distribution centres and stores by 2030.

PVH Corp has also made a commitment to improve its ethical and sustainable sourcing, with the goal that 100 per cent of its suppliers will meet or exceed its social and environmental standards by 2030. Some specific goals in this area include ensuring that migrant workers in its tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers will not pay recruitment fees by 2025, and that 100 per cent of workers in two key production countries will earn a living wage by 2025, and in four key production companies by 2030.

The company is also establishing professional development and life skills development programs for hundreds of thousands of people in its supply chain and tens of thousands of people in its workforce.

This is a step up from PVH Corp’s previous corporate responsibility efforts, according to Emanuel Chirico, chairman and CEO of PVH Corp.

“Forward Fashion represents a renewed sense of urgency to use the collective power of PVH to achieve transformative change at scale,” he said.

“The challenges and opportunities we face are bigger than PVH, but we are confident Forward Fashion will position us for success over the long-term, leading to more engaged associates, more loyal consumers and, ultimately, a more sustainable and responsible future for the fashion industry.”

Chirico is set to outline the strategy in more detail this week at the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, the industry’s leading sustainability conference since 2009.

PVH Corp is in the process of acquiring the joint venture with Gazal that held the licences for PVH brands in Australia. The $124 million acquisition was expected to close in the second quarter of 2019.

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