Kering Expands Environmental Impact Tool With Digital Platform
● The interactive tool includes data sets such as environmental key performance indicators.
PARIS — As consumers clamor for more answers on the sustainability front — with younger generations leading the charge — Kering is adding a new dimension to its key measurement tool, the environmental profit and loss account, by taking it to an interactive digital platform.
The EP&L, which the luxury group drafted in 2011 and began publishing in 2015, has been key to establishing Kering as a leader in its sector on sustainability issues. The group has adopted an open source approach, adding transparency to its own practices as well as prodding other actors in the industry to follow suit.
French President Emmanuel Macron has asked Kering chairman and chief executive officer François-Henri Pinault to lead the charge for a “Fashion Pact” of environmental commitments from the industry ahead of the summit of seven highly industrialized countries this summer in France.
Kering’s newly launched interactive version of the EP&L adds further layers of information, including data sets like environmental key performance indicators.
“This level of transparency allows unprecedented access to information about the relationship between business and the natural resources business relies on,” the company said in a statement.
Kering will also unleash the data to a gathering of technology developers in October, with a planned 48-hour hackathon geared at finding new ways to use the information to shed more light on the sector’s impact on the environment. The top three ideas will be awarded from a pot of 18,000 euros. Kering executives have said they are looking to solutions from the tech industry to help the company reach its target of reducing its EP&L impact by 40 percent between 2017 and 2025.
In a statement, Kering chief sustainability officer Marie-Claire Daveu said she hoped the new tools would help the movement toward reducing the fashion and luxury industry’s impact on the environment.
Kering’s star label Gucci has also begun publishing an EP&L, with an interactive digital version, becoming the first house in the group to do so.