SDM Juniors Visit Kering!
By: Julia Houssa
A few weeks ago, SDM juniors had the opportunity to visit the Kering Headquarters and receive an insightful presentation from Pauline Pigott, Sustainability Chief of Staff at Kering.
Our professors Johannes Wilbrenninck and Anna Krutiy brought us to Kering as part of our Global Professional Practices class. In this class, we have been focusing heavily on CSR and ESG along with how it is implemented by businesses on a global level. This was an exciting opportunity for us to explore how class content was being applied in a real business setting. The presentation was extremely detailed, but lets take a look at some of my key take aways from this wonderful experience!
The Fashion Sector as a Major Polluter
A major point of this presentation was how important the fashion industry truly is when it comes to global carbon emissions and other environmental and social consequences.
Climate Change: Green house gas (GHG) emissions linked to the fashion industry are estimated to account for 4-10% of total global emissions.
Lack of Circularity: The textile industry generates 92 million tonnes of waste annually. Less than 1% is actually being recycled.
Biodiversity Loss: Up to 1 million species are currently at risk of extinction due to human activities like pollution, deforestation and climate change. A loss of biodiversity causes numerous threats to the fashion industry across the supply chain and production systems.
Tech & Automation: Automation is expected to rise 25% in the next decade leading to 3% reduction in global employment.
Raw Materials: Materials such as cotton, leather and silk are associated with high water consumption, pollution, GHG emissions and deforestation along with social implications that sometimes include human rights violations.
Chemicals: Numerous hazardous chemicals are involved within the fashion industry that can have serious implications on workers health, fresh water sources, air pollution and more.
Sustainability at Kering
After having looked at the global fashion industry, we learned more about the role of sustainability in luxury. At a glance, luxury is about quality, rarity, and timelessness making it already on the right path for sustainability. However it is important to acknowledge flaws within the industry that require continued work and attention to ensure the highest possible level of environmental and social sustainability.
The Pillars for Luxury at Kering: Creativity, Timeless, Sustainability
“Our ambition: to be the world’s most influential Luxury group in terms of creativity, sustainability and long-term financial performance” — François-Henri Pinault | Chairman & CEO at Kering
The Team: Kering has a team of 50+ experts working in sustainability with profiles in circular economies, biodiversity, energy and more within the Kering Group. Each house also has sustainability leaders who are responsible for the continuous implementation of Kering’s sustainable strategy.
In the last 12 years Kering has had annual “Sustainability Reviews“, monthly discussions between sustainability leaders and yearly meetings for the 160 employees involved in sustainability throughout the group.
What’s the Strategy?
Image taken from Pauline Pigott’s presentation
The Environmental P&L: Kering has an effective manner of clearly monitoring impacts and goals through their environmental profit & loss. All of their environmental impacts are added to this document along with the different stages of the product lifecycle to determine when they can and have improved. From this they have noticed a few important factors including:
- 86% of their impacts fall outside of their own operations
- 70% of impacts are during raw material production and processing
The same is done for their social impacts with clear KPIs to act upon.
Going Above and Beyond
Kering’s sustainability initiatives span even outside of their direct business and operations in ways the average consumer would likely never know about since it isn’t heavily advertised.
Regenerative Fund for Nature: Kering created this fund in support environmental regeneration spanning from protecting and restoring diversity, enhancing animal welfare, increasing the capacity of soils and supporting the livelihood of farmers.
Focus on Innovation: Kering as a group focuses deeply on innovation. We learned about their three pillars around sustainable innovation which include their innovation labs, ventures, and brand’ collections.
Visiting Kering
After such an interesting presentation, we were given the opportunity to visit the Chapel they have at the HQ which holds some of Pinault’s art collection. It was a really beautiful experience for all of use to explore some history and understanding more about the group and its houses’ heritage. This entire trip was very insightful and truly thought provoking as we continue learning more about global professional practices!