Sustainable Products

Sustainable products

We will make our products more sustainable by using lower-impact materials and making sure everything we make lasts as long as possible. To help our customers make more sustainable choices, we will tell them how, where and with what footprint our products are made. We want to drive positive change on both supply and demand for more sustainable products.

OUR COMMITMENTS

Make more sustainable products

We want all our products to be made more sustainably by 2025 – including materials and how they are produced.

OUR GOALS

By 2022, use 100% more sustainable materials in all our denim
By 2025, 100% of products to be made more sustainably – including materials and how they are produced
By 2025, have 100% of production made in tier 1 factories that work with environmental and social performance according to industry standards

WHERE WE ARE

88% of all our denim products were made with either organic or recycled materials
63% of all new NA-KD products made with more sustainable materials* in 2021, up from 19% in 2020
Factories representing 88% of our spend assess and improve their environmental and social performance according to industry standards (Higg FEM and social audits)

KEY ACTIONS

Set a clear sustainable materials strategy.
Explore and implement additional certificates/ initiatives for more sustainable materials and/ or production methods.
Support current suppliers and onboard new suppliers that fulfil environmental and social requirements.
Training of the purchasing department.

*such as organic cotton, recycled cotton, recycled polyester, LENZINGTM ECOVEROTM Viscose, TENCELTM Lyocell, TENCELTM Modal, Naia, and other organic/ recycled and/or more sustainably produced materials

Accelerating traceability and transparency

We want our customers to know the origin and impact of their wardrobe.

OUR GOALS

By 2021, be transparent with production factories for products on our website.
By 2025, reach full supply chain transparency for 80% of our production.
By 2025 at the latest, be transparent on product climate footprint.

WHERE WE ARE

Check out a product on our website – go to 'Product background' and you will be able to see in what factory the product has been made. We also have our full supplier list available further down on this page.
We are currently implementing a system, Trustrace, which will allow us to work with product traceability upstream our supply chain – all the way to raw materials. And we are super excited to get started with our traceability work during 2022.
An important part of our transparency journey is to be able to tell you about the impacts of your wardrobe. We're working on it and hope to be able to communicate this way ahead of 2025!

KEY ACTIONS

Implement system support for product traceability.
Improved and transparent customer communication on product sustainability (e.g. CO2, water consumption, chemical use). Work together with supply chain partners to access environmental and climate data.

Our progress

Choosing the right materials is key when making more sustainable products. The right choices lead to a smaller environmental footprint and do less harm to both humans and wildlife. All the fabrics and fibers we classify as more sustainable are certified by independent accredited third-party agencies.

The raw materials of a fabric affects its durability and environmental performance. Our 'more sustainable' fabrics are made with organic, renewable or recyclable sources, and use less water, energy and/or chemicals in their production processes than conventional alternatives. This leads to a lower footprint, since the production processes often impact the environment more than the material itself does.

We’re increasing our share of more sustainable materials fast

We understand the importance of switching over to more sustainable materials and have rapidly increased our use of those fabrics. We launched our first collection with more sustainable materials in November 2019. And in 2021, 63% of all our new NA-KD products were made in more sustainable materials. Some examples of our progress:

76% of all our cotton is either organic or recycled, up from 47% in 2020
39% of all our polyester is recycled, up from 7% in 2020
53% of all our man-made cellulosic fibres are better produced, up from 19% in 2020 (this is mainly LENZING™ ECOVERO™ Viscose, but also Naia™, TENCEL™ Modal, TENCEL™ Lyocell and Livaeco Viscose)

(All figures for the full year 2021, updated annually as we publish our Sustainability Report for the previous year.)

NA‑KD Reborn

All our products are made by independent suppliers. Suppliers must all sign our Supplier Code of Conduct, including requirements for good working conditions, fair wages and decent working hours. We also require our suppliers to perform social audits and continuously improve their working conditions. For our more sustainable choices, the products are made from certified more sustainable materials, which means they are better than those containing conventional materials. Products labelled "More Sustainable" on our website, are also created in factories that participate in our Environmental Performance Improvement Program, using the Higg Index.

And we will continue to push the bar higher: Going forward, we aim for all NA‑KD Reborn products to be made with new innovative, sustainable materials or production techniques – such as recycled fishing nets or non-chemical fabric dyes using fruits and vegetables.

Read more about our more innovative materials and production techniques here.

Aiming for supply chain
transparency

Our long-term goal is to reach full supply chain transparency. A mission that most likely will take years to complete. However, during the past two years we have managed to get full transparency for our tier 1 factories - the factories that produce our garments. We are now continuing that journey to improve transparency in tier 2 and beyond, which are the producers of fabrics, yarn and raw materials.

According to the Fashion Transparency Index 2020, only 40% of brands publish their tier 1 suppliers on their websites. This needs to change. Therefore, you can now see information about our factories in the product descriptions on our website. To start, we state the factory name and address for all new products. Later, we will add additional information about each factory.

You can also find a list of all our producing factories here. and we are working to complement this list with processing factories. Read more about our traceability and transparency work in our Sustainability Report.