🌱 Step by Step: What's New in B Corp Version 7 (Part 2!), and How VEJA's 'No Ads' Policy Puts Money Back Into Their Materials.
🌱 Step by Step: What's New in B Corp Version 7 (Part 2!), and How VEJA's 'No Ads' Policy Puts Money Back Into Their Materials.
Featuring VEJA, Wildfarmed, Grind, IKEA, Nc'nean and more...
Happy Monday!
👋 If you're new to Following the Footprints, welcome! We're a volunteer-run content platform, created by sustainability professionals for sustainability professionals (that’s you!). Our goal is to dig into how consumer businesses are innovating to be more environmentally friendly. We land in your inbox with newsletters like this, but we also have loads of fun on LinkedIn too. We're huge fans of hearing from readers - so, if you're feeling social, reply to this email with ideas for what you want to see from us, a bit about yourself and your best climate joke. Let’s get to it…
This week we cover:
Quick Take: B Corp Version 7 (Part 2) - What Do We Know So Far?
Brand Spotlight: Going One Step Further: A Walk Through the Life of a VEJA Shoe, from Farm to Repair Shop.
In case you missed it: 🌱 Distilling B Corp: Inside the new Version 7 updates, and Nc'nean Whisky's three steps to a 135.6 score.
> Good News Last Week
🎯 Sustainable shoe brand VEJA has opened a Repair Shop in Paris, expanding their repair initiatives outside their existing repair corners in stores. VEJA aims to keep costs low, encouraging consumers to repair rather than re-purchase.
🎯 Wildfarmed, a producer of regenerative flour, has achieved B Corp status. Major food producers, including Marks & Spencer, Ocado, and Abel & Cole, use their flour in breads, pizzas, and pastas.
🎯 Wahaca has been named UK’s most Sustainable Restaurant Group by consumer rights magazine Which?. The magazine took into account sourcing, emissions, customer transparency and more.
⭐️ IKEA is up-cycling work uniforms into a new collection of pillows, blankets, bags, and more. This is IKEA’s first large-scale effort to repurpose its own waste.
⭐️ Lidl has begun a recycling awards pilot in its Glasgow stores. Rather than the familiar scheme of paying a deposit on a product price, bottle and can-returners will receive 5p vouchers for returning empty containers, which can be put towards their shopping or donated to charity.
⚡ A French Member of Parliament has tabled a new bill in France to impose a €5 levy on fast-fashion purchases, citing unfair competition with French retailers who must adhere to stricter social and environmental standards.
> Want good news sooner? We post every Friday on LinkedIn! If your CPG brand has good news to share, let us know.
> Quick Take
B Corp Version 7 (Part 2) - What Do We Know So Far?
We asked and you answered: 100% of you who answered our poll want details and concrete actions about the new standards.
Today we are taking a closer look at two proposed environmental topics: Climate Action and Environmental Stewardship & Circularity. We will look at how the draft requirements are going beyond the Version 6 standards and at some recommended actions.
Let’s dive in…
👉 Climate Action
What’s new?
Measuring emissions
We saw this one coming a mile off… while measuring scope 1 and 2 emissions was a focus of Version 6, under Version 7 companies will be required to report their value chain emissions. This includes scope 3. You can look to the GHG protocol to help identify which scope 3 emissions are relevant for your business.
Consumer goods companies with more than 250 employees (or more than $75 million revenue) will need to have their emissions inventory verified by an independent third party.
Setting targets
Net zero targets must be science-based and aligned with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement and have appropriate interim targets.
A plan that you can turn into ACTION
Crucially, companies of all sizes must have a climate transition plan! What does this include? Budgets for climate actions, a list of actions and departments/individuals responsible for carrying them out, stakeholder engagement mechanisms, basically everything it takes to reach your targets. For more guidance, check out this resource by the CDP.
New features for larger consumer goods businesses also include:
Planning for a just transition.
Tying part of exec compensation to climate targets.
Climate advocacy.
What is a just transition? “Greening the economy in a way that is as fair and inclusive as possible to everyone concerned, creating decent work opportunities and leaving no one behind.” - The International Labour Organization
What actions can you take now?
If you have been dipping your toes into your value chain emissions, now is the time to dive in! Take a look at our MEASURE database to find a partner, or read here about how Butternut Box started measuring their scope 3 emissions.
Get your house in order: make sure your company is clear on its net zero targets and your plan to reach it is not siloed. Organise meetings across departments and keep detailed records of agreed actions.
👉 Environmental Stewardship & Circularity
What’s new?
Getting the basics right
Understand where your waste and recycling goes after it is collected.
On top of monitoring your water use you should indicate where your operations are in regions facing water risk.
Assess the company’s actual (and potential) environmental impacts across the value chain. If an aspect is classed as not material enough to warrant a mitigation plan, be prepared with a rationale.
Fully equipped
To make sure your environmental strategy will translate into real impact, the relevant people in the business will need to have enough formal guidance to implement that strategy.
Product development
Circularity principles should be embedded in the product development process. That might include a study of how consumers use your products and dispose of them.
As you re-certify, prepare to show a reduction of virgin non-recyclable materials.
Get ready to show your progress
Very large businesses should actively be working to increase end-of-life recovery of products.
Prepare to show progress on your overall environmental strategy, for very large businesses there is a requirement for this to include a biodiversity plan.
For high risk materials, prepare to demonstrate progress tracing the materials back to their origin and that you have mitigation plans in place.
What actions can you take now?
Take a look back at our recent article on the tools available to help find the environmental hotspots in your value chain. Review your high risk materials/ ingredients and make sure you have a plan in place to trace these back to their origin and get more granular on their risks.
💡Top tip: Don’t go it alone, create a task force which includes someone from the top management team. Agree on your responsibilities and meet regularly.
Don’t forget, our full breakdown of the new draft of Version 7 of the standards is here. In order to read it through, you must begin the feedback process. Because it is a huge amount of information, the opportunity to provide feedback is given under each requirement and topic. This is great because it means you can provide feedback on an issue you feel passionate about, without going into detail on every topic.
> Brand Spotlight
Going One Step Further: We Walk Through the Life of a VEJA Shoe, From Farm to Repair Shop.
In a world dominated by fast fashion, VEJA is driving innovation in the footwear industry. For them, it all starts with the materials that make their shoes.
Founded in 2004, the French footwear brand seamlessly blends style, ethics, and environmental responsibility - selling 12 million pairs in the process. Just this month, they made headlines for opening a repair shop in Paris - named the ‘General Store’. They have a ‘no ad’ policy, reinvesting the money spent by other brands on marketing costs (70% of a shoe’s cost, according to them) back into their production chain.
Let’s take a closer look at what goes into a single shoe…
Materials
VEJA partners directly with small-scale producers and cooperatives, ensuring fair wages and working conditions for everyone involved. They’ve invested heavily in knowing exactly where their materials are sourced from…
COTTON: Their cotton is 100% organic, and good thing too - they’ve bought over tonnes of organic, agroecological, and fair-trade cotton direct from producer associations in Brazil and Peru since 2004. In 2022 alone, they purchased 345 tonnes of cotton from 1,035 families in Brazil and Peru - paying 50% in advance to the associations they belong to off the back of a 2021 drought.
See their material supplier list and organic cotton producer contract for more.
RUBBER: Buying rubber at 5 times the market price, VEJA purchase directly from cooperatives formed by families of rubber tappers in the Amazon - the only place on earth where rubber trees grow in the wild. Included in the price is a bonus for quality, for ‘Social and Environmental Services’ and to invest in development projects (via the Fair for Life certification). Over 1200 families are represented by the associations involved in their rubber sourcing project.
See their material supplier list and rubber producer contracts for more.
ONE STEP FURTHER: VEJA is the first trainer brand to use fabric made entirely from recycled plastic bottles and recycled polyester. In 2019, they also launched a ‘C.W.L’ version of one of its shoes, utilising a vegan and bio-based alternative originally produced in Italy. Iterating on this initial release, and incorporating organic cotton, the shoe is now produced in Brazil too.
When it comes to their carbon footprint, the devil is in the detail of their materials too. 71% of their CO2 emissions in 2019 came from raw materials alone. Amazingly, 97.43% of these emissions are due to leather - bumped up because cattle raising and tanning is taken into account.
With the help of UTOPIES, VEJA figured out that Scope 1 and Scope 2 is just 0.03% of their total footprint.
Manufacturing
To maintain control over the entire production process, VEJA bypasses traditional manufacturing intermediaries.
Since the start, VEJA shoes have been produced in Brazil. Their factories and workshops respect ILO rules, emphasising key criteria like their freedom to form groups to defend their rights. Workers enjoy 4 weeks of paid holiday every year, work a regulated 44 hour week and many of them live close by with shared bus services on offer too.
In 2023, they launched production in Europe - producing over 100,000 pairs in Portugal before telling anyone, specifically for the EU market.
Transportation & Distribution
From the very beginning, VEJA have provided meaningful employment to vulnerable, disabled and socially excluded people through their distribution centres. Initially working with Atelier Sans Frontières, VEGA supported 275 people in finding a job and stability over the last 16 years. After outgrowing ASF’s services, they switched to Log'ins - an organisation that works with lightly disabled people. In 2022 alone, this supported over 200 people - 40% of whom had not worked for over a year when they first started.
Consumer Use and End of Life
Finally, their Repair Shop. Whilst this isn’t new for VEJA stores (many already have repair corners) what’s unique about their recent General Store in Paris is that the store is entirely dedicated to repairing shoes and clothing - no shoes are sold. They keep the rates low, customers can bring their clothing and shoe care products are sold.
The B Corp certified brand (see their evaluation here) is well aware of their limits, and transparent about them too. Despite this, or even because of this, in our eyes they’re well and truly leading the way - step by step, sustainable sneaker by sustainable sneaker.
Take a closer look at VEJA:
> In case you missed it
🌱 Distilling B Corp: Inside the new Version 7 updates, and Nc'nean Whisky's three steps to a 135.6 score.
Featuring Melibio, VFC, Patagonia, PUMA, Grove Collaborative and more...
> Follow up with…
Article: Most Businesses Don’t Understand Scope 3 Emissions — Here’s Why
Article: Life Cycle Assessments & the Fashion Industry – The good, the bad, the potential.
👉 Pssst - want to be featured in our ‘Meet the Partners’ series? Reach out here!