Checking in on Ganni's ambitious sustainability strategy

Nobody said reducing your impact was easy

Sustainability is hard.

Quick recap: brands don’t make clothes themselves, they do it through a long, messy web of companies, who do everything from dyeing fabric to cutting and sewing it into finished pieces. The fact that almost nobody owns their own factories makes it really hard for brands to reduce their impact. This is one of the biggest reasons that progress in the industry is so slow — very few brands really want to do the work, and even fewer want to pay for it.

Which is why I’ve always been so vocal about Ganni, the Danish womenswear brand that’s not afraid of putting the work in when it comes to sustainability. The brand is aiming to slash its carbon footprint in half by 2027, has completely eliminated virgin leather from its collections and has been experimenting with “insetting” its carbon emissions by helping its suppliers transition to renewable energy.

Ganni is such a powerful example because it’s very large and very successful — these guys do hundreds of millions of euros in revenue a year and have over 20 flagships stores all over the world. They’re proving that big brands can do more than just greenwash, and that’s an important statement to make because if they can do it, then everyone else at the top of the industry can.

To be clear, this does not mean that we can just expect brands to give us sustainability (someone has to make them do it). And it doesn’t mean that there’s straightforward, easy answers to be found here — there’s no guarantee that Ganni will hit that 50% emissions reduction, and the brand’s insetting work is very much a pilot project. It might not be perfect and it is absolutely not going to give us a sustainable industry on its own, but it’s important work.

Which is why I caught up with Lauren Bartley, Ganni’s Chief Sustainability Officer, to check in on the brand’s ambitious sustainability strategy. Ganni just released its sustainability report for 2023, and the brand’s carbon footprint has reduced by 7%, to around 15,000 tons. It’s important to note that much of that figure comes from more accurate data, although the brand is expecting much bigger reductions to come in the next few years.

Congrats on reducing your carbon footprint by 7%. How does it feel?

Good question. It feels good from my side, in all honestly also a little nervous to have it out there publicly, especially around maintaining a reduction. But part of why we make public commitments is so we have pressure to deliver. For next year, actually, I don't feel worried at all. It's the subsequent years.

Why not for next year?

Because 25% of our material emissions for 2023 were still coming from virgin leather. And by the end of last year, we stopped producing products in virgin leather entirely. So 25% will be gone. Of course, there'll be increases from recycled leather and recycled polyester, but we can feel confident that there'll be a reduction in material emissions again for next year.

Okay. So if we look at 2023, where did that 7% reduction come from?

We have to caveat by saying that a chunk of it is coming from having more accurate data and less assumptions. But second to that it’s materials — there was a 2% reduction in emissions from materials. That continues to decline. 

And then the third is transportation. And that was mainly because in 2023 we introduced a bonded warehouse in China. So a lot of transportation for the US and China was not coming from the Netherlands, it was coming from the warehouse in China. And for this year we've also done a couple of transportation pilots as well. So we should see better routes for transportation for next year too.

Okay. So when you talk about the materials being most effective for 2023, the phase out of animal level wasn't completed until this year. So what's the most effective part of the material strategy from this 7%?

It's the increase in preferred materials, reducing our reliance on virgin materials. That increased across the board for 2023. And then of course the leather is the highest emitter, 25% of our material emissions.

So effectively that 25% is going to be wiped off the spreadsheet and then replaced by a much smaller number?

Exactly. So it will be an increase in recycled leather and also an increase in recycled polyester, which both have lower emission intensity. And also an increase in fabrics of the future as well, which was very minimal in terms of impact for 2023 because the volume was so small as we were still in the test phase with many partners..

So where do you guys project the rest of this 50% emissions reduction is going to come from?

 A lot of it is betting on innovation that is somewhat out of our control. We're prioritizing using material innovations as much as possible, but right now, readily available options are limited, so we are betting on development in this space. Secondly, it’s transportation, trying to change some of the routes of transportation to use more road and sea, rather than air. We still use a lot of air freight. There's a massive opportunity there. 

And then there's the other work on innovation, which falls under circular business models. Fiber to fiber recycling, things like that. And circular business models — rental, repair and resale, we're focusing much more this year on in-store resale, so much more of the floor space in our postmodern outlet stores dedicated to secondhand. That's one of our biggest priorities for this year.

How much of the 50% emissions reduction do you guys project will come from insetting?

This is a very good question. Actually insetting is not reflected in Ganni’s emissions for 2023. So the 15,000 tonne footprint doesn't include insetting at all, and that's due to the greenhouse gas protocol methodology not recognising insetting. The way that it works currently, we have to report carbon insetting and Ganni’s carbon footprint separately. We can't minus them from each other, which is really a shame, but it’s looking like that will be changing this year. There should be some new criteria so we will actually be able to minus it off. The reason is that we don't own the factory, so technically we can't account for the emission reduction, which is a shame. So it's actually very difficult to figure out the true impact.

Because it's also that, say, if you guys put a bunch of solar panels on one factory, it's hard to quantify because a bunch of other brands will also be producing clothes in that factory. Right?

Exactly. 

So it's, how much of this reduction is ours versus how much is someone else's?

Yeah, exactly.

If you were to be able to minus it, how much would it be?

The calculation that we had from Plan A [the carbon accounting platform used by Ganni, as well Chloé] was around 1% per factory. We have four factories now running on the programme, but Ramil is the only one where we have a year's worth of data.

We implemented the solar panels at two factories in Italy last year. And one of them has actually not even had them turned on yet. And then the other one, which is Rodriguez in Portugal, again, they're on the roof, but the factory is still under construction and won’t be operational until September 2024.

1% for one factory, that's still a meaningful number, right?

Yeah, exactly. And that's also bearing in mind that we occupy around 80% of their production capacity, which is obviously not the same for all of the suppliers that we're working with. So it is a little bit of a finger in the air on insetting at the minute.

What's stopping those numbers from being higher?

In Portugal you can only run 70% of solar energy and you have to send 30% back to the grid. And for Ramil specifically, unfortunately there wasn’t any battery storage in place. For the renewable energy that they then had, they used 40% of it and then the rest was sent back to the grid. So actually 30% of it could have been captured and then used at another time when they needed it. So there's these nuances that are also playing into it. But with Ramil, we're in discussion with them around how much it would cost to have battery storage, and if that is something that we could also support with.

So part of the insetting work that you're doing is actually benefiting the Portuguese energy grid rather than Ganni’s carbon footprint?

Yes.

Okay. It's complicated.

It is a little complicated, but hopefully with the revision in the methodology, it should work in our favor.

Let's continue with insetting. This is just one pilot project. How many more facilities are you guys hoping to scale this out to? You've got four currently, right?

Yeah, and we've committed to having  a total of seven by the end of 2025. We're in a bit of a unique position now where we've switched out some of our manufacturing, and actually a lot of the new manufacturers that we're working with already have solar panels installed, which is obviously great, but it means then for insetting, we're running out of Tier One manufacturers that we can work with. And then the further we go down into Tier Two and Tier Three, it's more impactful, but the less leverage and influence that we have because of the volumes they produce directly for Ganni. Our outreach to other brands to try and get involved in this project has not been successful so far.

So let's say if you guys have a dye house that you work and they work with 10, 20 other brands. To truly be able to inset with them, you'd need those other 20 brands on board. Otherwise it's too much money.

It's not really the money, it becomes more about how frequently Ganni uses this supplier. It would be quite difficult to set up a commercial contract to say “we'll continue working with you for the next three years on X amount of volume”. And that's what we've had to do for the other suppliers. So it wouldn't necessarily mean that we would need 20 other brands, but we would need the brands that also have leverage and influence and who work with the dye house continuously.

So, you work with your cut and sew people on much longer terms than you do with fabric mills and dye houses? 

Yes. 

Okay. Okay. I mean, this is the thing, right? No one's forcing anyone to do it.

Yeah.

Which I suppose is why you guys are hitting a bit of a roof with the insetting project.

Yeah. I mean, it's great because it is a very tangible project where you can see the impact that it's having, but it's just quantifying that impact and scaling it that’s an issue.

Because you're running out of tier one suppliers to do it with.

Yeah, I mean the one that we have in Italy is actually a tier two. But yeah, it's not like there’s a large pool of suppliers that we can fish from.

What needs to change in order to make it more scalable?

Brands coming together on it, so there's more leverage and influence together. And then of course, having these longer term contracts with suppliers for sure. We've been able to do it with many of the Tier One suppliers, not only on insetting, but also on living wages. But further down in the supply chain, we struggle with the fact that Ganni is very fashion-led, and we don’t always have very consistent products collection on collection [so they can’t always work with the same suppliers for a long time]. The more we have consistency in our collections and carry-over styles, the better it is for us as a sustainability team, something that is a bit contradictory to the nature of ever-changing trends in fashion.

So overall, we're halfway through 2024 now, and we've got three years left until your target finishes in 2027. How confident are you guys feeling?

Somewhat confident would be the best way to describe it. Do I think that 50% is an absolutely moonshot goal? Yes. Did we know that when we set it? Yes. The conditions to get there are very much hinged on innovation, which we're obviously very keen to invest in, but the rate in which these innovations are scaling is quite worrying. We have around 35 fabric innovations that we're exploring, and this year we've pinned down 11 that we see are the most commercially viable and scalable into main collections. So that's what we're focusing on for this year. But even so, it's a real challenge.

What's standing in the way of material innovation? 

Investment. It's really expensive to scale a completely new material. And then when you're also dealing with a lot of competing priorities from different brands. It's not always the case that they have a ready-made material. A lot of them are still very much iterating the fabric or the material and then accommodating individual brands.

Someone wants to use it for shoes, someone wants to use it for bags.

Exactly. Some won't proceed without an LCA, some will. The varying demands on brands can often lead a lot of startups into many directions that they're chasing at the same time, and sometimes they lose focus. And we've seen that in other areas too.

Which alternative materials have you guys found most impactful so far?

Renewcell’s Ciculose has been by far the most impactful that we've had, because we've been able to scale it into the main collection. It's very versatile. We can use it on a lot of different fabrications and in a lot of products. So it’s amazing that they've just been bailed out [of bankruptcy] and we have enough material for the next two years, which is also great. So that has been very impactful for us. 

We have it predominantly in denim, and then we have some trials running right now to replace the polyamide in some of our wool products and wool beanies with Circulose, which is also incredible. So recycled wool, and then 20% Circulose, which gives a really nice soft hand feel. Hopefully we can also launch that next year.

And then some of the leather alternatives are working out very well for us, which is great. Alongside that, actually, we've managed to scale the in-house recycling setups that we also have, which is using the production scraps, repurposing them, and then making them into T-shirts again. So 50% of Ganni’s organic cotton T-shirts are coming from pre-production scraps, and that has been really effective for us.

What kind of emission reduction are we talking, let's say for the denim?

Yeah, again, it’s very hard to quantify. When we were doing the carbon footprint calculation, it was the same time as Renewcell's bankruptcy. So we're actually still waiting for the LCA [Life Cycle Assessment — the measurement of how impactful a product or material is] from Circulose. So again, when we do the calculation for 2024, we should see something different.

It feels like with all this stuff, it's all very new, it's all completely unproven, right?

Yes, a lot of the work that we're doing, the methodology and frameworks to measure and report these things have not necessarily caught up. But for us, it's not a reason to stop. Because from a very logical perspective, obviously a factory running off solar energy instead of conventional energy must be better. It’s the same for the production processes and materials. But yes, we are playing catch up with a lot of things and a lot of the work that we're doing, we cannot quantify through the data and methodology that exists today.

Frustrating.

But that’s not a reason to sit and wait around for it. We really just need to keep going in the hopes that it catches up and then proves the theory that we have. 

Are any brands reaching out to you to try and replicate what you're doing?

We have a lot of brands reach out to us on fabrics of the future, out of curiosity of how we're managing to move quickly on it and what they're more curious about the internal mechanism of teams and getting teams on board with adopting a different mindset, I guess, for material innovation. We had brands reach out a couple of years ago around in setting when we had the case study with Global Fashion Summit, but it didn't materialize into any partnerships, unfortunately.