Allbirds audits, selfimposes carbon tax
AUCKLAND: While politicians dither, trendy shoemaker Allbirds is ‘‘selfimposing’’ a carbon tax on every piece of footwear it makes.
Kiwi and former All White Tim Brown cofounded the startup five years ago with San Fransciscan industrial engineerturned Goldman Sachs analyst Joey Zwillinger.
The duo developed shoes made from New Zealand merino wool and had sold one million pairs by late 2017 — allowing a Series A round last year that saw them raise $US50 million ($NZ75 million) at a private equity valuation of $US1.4 billion ($NZ2.1 billion) valuation.
There’s been a focus on sustainable materials throughout. Beyond wool, its footware features recycled plastic bottles, cardboard, wood fibre and foam derived from renewable, rainwateronly sugar cane.
And it’s already been a relatively lowemission company. But now Brown says ‘‘It’s time to take the next step and become carbonneutral’’.
His company used an inhouse team plus consultants to carry out a full audit of its carbon footprint, from sheep stations in South Canterbury to its textile mill in Italy to its manufacturing in South Korea to San Francisco, where it calculated the environmental cost of its corporate staff’s daily commute.
The process has culminated in a new scheme, announced today, that will see All Birds ‘‘selfimpose’’ a carbon tax on every pair of shoes it produces.
Brown and Mr Zwillinger did not want to say how much money was involved per pair of shoes but did say the money would be used to buy carbon offset credits from US ‘‘public benefit corporation’’ NativeEnergy.
Brown said Allbirds would help fund NativeEnergy projects in three areas: replanting Amazon rainforest, developing wind farms in India and a project to trap methane from landfill and meat production.
Brown said over the next few years, being carbon neutral would shift from being a ‘‘nicetohave’’ to a ‘‘nonnegotiable’’.
Why not sooner? Brown says conducting full life cycle analysis (LCA in greenspeak) of your company’s product line is a complicated and expensive business. He said he could understand that many startups couldn’t put the hurlyburly of earlystage survival on hold to address it.
But now that it was established, his company was addressing it. He says its ‘‘selfimposed’’ carbon tax on every shoe would incentivise it to make its production greener, thereby lowering its selfinflicted penalty.
He said the fashion industry still had a long way to go. Many companies in the sector have a costcutting focus that makes them among the worst carbon emission offenders, he added.