-- Download 2012 Factories Map of Impact as PDF --

As part of Timberland’s Sustainable Living Environment (SLE) program, our supplier sustainability team (SST) spends time with factory workers and managers to understand if they are able to meet basic needs and if factory employment is helping to improve their lives. Understanding the causes of worker stress is critical for assessing worker needs and helping our suppliers be more productive and profitable.

Studies show that sixty percent of lost workdays each year can be attributed to stress. Occupational stress has causes beyond working conditions, as conflicts between the demands of workplace and home life are increasingly common—which we discovered when interviewing workers at Timberland’s contract factories.

Prioritizing Early Childhood Care and Education

As part of its ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, India has an integrated child-development program where zero-to-three-year-olds attend an early childhood center. Any manufacturing or construction site with a certain number of female workers of reproductive age is required by law to provide an onsite crèche (child care facility). Unfortunately, factories often don’t dedicate appropriate resources, leaving working parents with lackluster options for their young children’s care.

At one of Timberland’s apparel suppliers in Chennai, India—Celebrity Fashions Ltd.—Timberland’s Supplier Sustainability Specialist Rita Kodkani found that crèches exist, but are not utilized by workers. Factory workers perceived the crèches as unsafe, unclean, under-staffed and/or having unskilled staff. As Kodkani spoke further with local community members, it was clear that a high quality early child care development center was also lacking within the larger community. Together with Celebrity workers and management, and in consultation with the community at large, a community-based center was recommended for the following reasons:

• Factory crèches are often lacking in quality in terms of trained personnel, educational activities as well as space for the children to play and rest. As a result, only 6% of workers were utilizing in factory-based crèches for their children.
• Factory-based crèches admit only children three-months-old to three-years-old. However, children of workers (and parents within the community) older than three need both early childhood education and care—and children older than six need after-school care.
• Government sponsored child-care centers (Anganwadis) and other neighborhood facilities are open only from 9am until noon or 6pm, while factory workers need child support from 8am to 8pm.

Celebrity Fashions management was eager to see high-quality care for their workers’ children, according to Kodkani. “While Celebrity management has crèches in all of their factories to meet the legal requirement, they strongly believe that the more workers’ well-being is addressed, better opportunity exists for improved quality and productivity,” she says. “The need for a quality crèche and day care in Chennai increased due to an increasing number of women workers at the factory over time, as well as an increasing trend in married women workers.”

Collaboration to Forge Solutions

With multiple sites and limited resources, increasing crèche budgets at each Celebrity Fashions factory didn’t seem realistic, but the factory expressed interest in finding a solution. Timberland contacted Verité—an international non-profit that Timberland has partnered with on worker improvement projects for over 10 years. In turn, Verité engaged local NGOs ASK India and Samvada to seek a solution. Together with Celebrity workers and management, and in consultation with the community at large, a community-based center was recommended.

As a result, Celebrity management, Samvada and ASK India committed to opening a community-based early childhood care and education (ECCE) center to provide high quality child care focusing on emotional and physical health, social and cognitive development for children of workers. Timberland provided initial funding, and the fully equipped and fully operational Community Crèche opened on December 27, 2012.

The Center is available to both factory employees as well as parents within the community, and care is offered to workers’ children at subsidized rates. The factory hired professionally trained ECCE staff with the help of Samvada, who ensured childcare, preschool education and after-school care would meet both the legal requirements and community and factory workers’ needs.

Delivering Value for Factories and Communities

Built into the strategy for the Center, Samvada aims to enhance the productivity of factory workers by assuring quality child care while they’re at work. Samvada helped form a Mothers’ Committee Group to involve factory workers to supervise and monitor the ECCE center. There has been a positive reaction from workers and the community upon the Center’s opening:

Mother Lakshi – “I learnt from the welfare officer that the teachers are trained to not just take care of the children but to also teach them. I would have to spend so much money to send my child to kindergarten. Now my child can study and I can work peacefully.”

Tamil Selvi NGO (local self-help group) – “Within the community this is the first of its kind. We are very happy with the fee structure—it’s affordable for the parents. I wish lot of success and will tell other community parents also to utilize this facility. Thank you Celebrity and Timberland.”

Factory management has also been pleased with the outcome. As Mr. Charath Narasimhan, CEO of Celebrity Fashions, recounted at the inauguration:

“My biggest satisfaction is that we have chosen education of children, which is the future of our country. Many of your children, Narayanapuram branch employees’ children, the community member’s children can be placed here. This should be model—and we have to open many more like this, and that should be our aim.”

By opening the crèche to the community at-large and ensuring a broad scope of time and age for children eligible to attend, the Center is now being used by a wider group of workers and the community. The revenue generated from increased use is enough to offset the majority of operating expenses, leaving Celebrity with less resource commitment than what their onsite factory crèches would collectively cost. In demonstrating success with this first Center, Celebrity and the local NGOs are hopeful that more factories will follow suite and invest in the sustainable livelihood of their workers and communities.

-- Download The Business Value of Workers’ Children’s Wellbeing as PDF --

Earth Day is quickly approaching and Timberland is excited to celebrate for the 15th consecutive year by participating in community greening and revitalization projects in over 20 countries across the globe. Last year Timberland employees completed more than 145 service projects, generating more than 25,000 hours of service, positively impacting communities worldwide. Timberland’s commitment to corporate responsibility is rooted in community service; the brand has worked passionately to create positive and sustainable impacts in communities for over 20 years.

This year Timberland is celebrating Earth Day by directing over 110 community service projects from New Hampshire and New York City to London and Hong Kong. Some this year’s Earth Day projects include:

New York City: Partnering with the group Concrete Safaris of East Harlem, 40-50 Timberland employees will work with children 8-12 years old to plant, mulch, and renovate the program’s many educational gardens. Concrete Safaris is an after school program that works with children to promote healthy living and an active lifestyle. Volunteers will also lead the children on a scenic bicycle ride through the boroughs of New York.

Zhuhai, China: Timberland’s Zhuhai office is working with employees from the Pou Yuen Factory at an event where over 130 volunteers will work to re-green the local riverside park by planting 100 new trees, as well as working to paint, decorate, and renovate the local children’s community center. This event is a unique opportunity for Timberland employees to team up with the employees of the Pou Yuen factory, and work alongside their families and children as well.

London, England: 45 volunteers will serve with the Rushmore Primary School, working on a project to renovate and improve the children’s playground area. The team will renovate the gardening and landscaping around the playground perimeter, build an outdoor area for the children to create artwork, and renovate the educational garden where students can plant fruits and vegetables. This project is a collaborative event with our partners from Timberland’s International Design Center.

Timberland HQ Stratham, NH: Over 300 employees from Timberland’s world headquarters will be participating in six events in the local surrounding area. Events include building a playground at the Monarch School for children with disabilities, tree planting and re-greening of a local dog park, building workbenches and painting at two local summer camps and after school teen centers, as well as sewing teddy bears from environmentally conscious materials that will be given to children in need.

Timberland’s commitment to Earth Day as an annual celebration of service to our planet, allows for unique opportunities to work with our partners year after year. In 2012 Timberland employees built 125 wooden bird houses for the New Hampshire Department of Fish and Game, 25 of which will be newly installed at the Great Bay Nature Conservancy this upcoming Earth Day.

“We always try to pick a diversity of projects and locations for our service events, to accommodate the skills and abilities of all of our employees” said Brianne Wood, Community Service Manager at Timberland. “Events always include both outdoor and indoor activities so that every employee has the opportunity to participate and contribute in their own way.”

Robert Gibbons, a newly hired Interactive Developer, recently participated in Timberland’s New Employee Day of Service at a local New Hampshire food pantry. “It was great to work alongside the pantry’s volunteers and get to see how appreciative they were of everything we were able to accomplish that afternoon” said Robert. “I am looking forward to getting the chance to serve again during our Earth Day celebration in a couple weeks.”

With Earth Day quickly approaching, the Timberland team is working to put together the final pieces of the 110 events taking place worldwide. Earth Day is an employee driven effort that is managed worldwide by our volunteer team of Global Stewards and other passionate employees in each Timberland location. This Earth Day, Timberland employees are projected to contribute over 18,500 hours of service to their local communities, helping to make a positive and sustainable impact all over the globe. “I am looking forward to a great showing this year and the smiles on everybody’s faces after seeing the work that we’ve accomplished at the end of the day,” said Wood. “I’m so grateful that Timberland gives us such a wonderful opportunity for us to give back to our local communities and it is amazing to see how much we can achieve together.”

-- Download Timberland Celebrates Earth Day 2013 as PDF --

Look at an aerial view of Hispaniola—the two-nation island that contains the Dominican Republic and Haiti—and the border between the countries is startlingly obvious. On the Dominican side, lush, green forests carpet the hills. On the Haitian side, a barren, brown landscape stretches into the distance. With only 2.2% of its forests remaining, Haiti was a perfect candidate for Timberland’s ambitious tree-planting initiative.

In 2010 Timberland set a global goal of planting 5 million trees by 2015. Timberland’s tree planting project in Haiti supports this goal, specifically aiming to create a self-sustaining agro-forestry model that will result in agricultural improvement, environmental restoration, and improved wellbeing for participating farmers.

“We saw a strong need for restoring the environment in Haiti,” says Margaret Morey-Reuner, Timberland’s senior manager of global brand value marketing. “We wanted to help reverse the pattern of deforestation in a sustainable manner. Our goal was to provide the seed funding for a network of nurseries that would be self-sustaining in 36 to 48 months.”

To accomplish this, Timberland partnered with Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA), an organization dedicated to improving lives in Haiti through a combination of forestry and agriculture. According to SFA president Hugh Locke, Timberland’s approach is somewhat unique.

“With Timberland, we’ve found a true partner rather than just a source of funding,” Locke says. “They’re committed to developing the capacity of the farmers and come up with a new approach that would ultimately be self-managed and self-funded.”

Under the Timberland/SFA initiative, farmers grow trees in exchange for better crop seeds, tools, and training. The farmers’ ultimate reward is increased revenue as a result of the sale of excess trees and higher crop yields—as well as the benefit of using the newly planted trees as “living fences” for farmers to protect their land without investing in poles and fencing to maintain them.

With Timberland’s support, SFA oversees the program in conjunction with agronomist Timote George, the former Haiti country director of an organization called Trees for the Future. They chose the area surrounding the city of Gonaïves for a pilot project, which had been devastated by floods in 2008. Success depends on combining agriculture and forestry in a discipline known as agroforestry. That means motivating 2,000 local smallholder farmers to plant and grow the trees.

“From day one, we were rigorously disciplined about the process,” says Locke. That meant allowing the farmers themselves to make all the decisions, from selecting the seed to setting prices. “We had agronomists available to help, but the farmers themselves were the agents in the process,” says Locke.

Three years into the project, Morey-Reuner reports that crop yields are up 40-50% . Due to the crop revenues generated, the farmers are now able to send their children to school and purchase livestock—something they couldn’t afford before. Timberland and SFA are planning a similar cooperative venture in northern Haiti, beginning in July 2013.

As Timberland’s initial pilot in Gonaives begins to deliver sustainable results, its success signals an opportunity to expand the program to other countries. We’re busy planting trees all over the world, on almost every continent where environmental restoration is in need. “Just like the people are ready for change, the environment is ready for change,” says Mark Newton, Timberland’s vice president of corporate social responsibility. “Given a little bit of incentive, local partners, and community engagement, you can do amazing things.”

-- Download Creating A Greener Haiti, One Tree At A Time as PDF --

Twenty years ago, Timberland created our Path of Service^™ program—a monumental moment that marked the beginning of a rich tradition of service. When the Path of Service^™ program debuted on September 18, 1992, it offered employees up to 16 hours of paid time each year to engage in community service—an unconventional idea at the time. In 1995, the number of paid hours available to employees was raised to 40 hours a year, and by the late 1990s, the company formalized two annual service events designed to make it easy for employees to serve.

In 1997, the company began organizing an annual day of service around Earth Day, in recognition of Timberland as an outdoor brand. The following year, we started a tradition called Serv-a-palooza, Timberland’s own annual celebration of community service.

To celebrate the 20th Anniversary, we put our values into action at events around the world, thanks to our team of Global Stewards—passionate employees who volunteer above and beyond their regular job responsibilities to serve as ambassadors of corporate social responsibility. Here are some of the highlights that span the globe:

• China: Global Steward Vincent He organized a team that painted a wall in a primary school classroom, while another team treated 60 kindergarteners to an outing in a local park. Many of the children had never been to a park before.

• Italy: Global Steward Francesca Vitale organized a two-day service trip for three teams of employees to Cinque Terre on Palmaria Island. Each team worked on different projects, including cleaning beaches, renovating benches along the paths, and repainting an old military fortress.

• Japan: Global Steward Shiho Hirasawa’s team spread its celebration across the year, arranging monthly service events from May through November.

• Spain: Global Steward Lorena Ibáñez and her teams provided gardening services at a retirement home and prepared a special lunch for students at a sailing school for the disabled.

• Taiwan: With the support of Global Steward Marty Shen, Taiwan launched a program that rewards consumers for engaging with Timberland in service—a concept that’s spread to other Timberland locations around the world.

• USA: Near our Stratham, New Hampshire global headquarters, community engagement manager Brianne Wood coordinated more than 350 volunteers in this year’s Serv-a-Palooza in three locations. The team helped 25 non-profit organizations by constructing outdoor furniture, creating and restoring over three miles of trails, and knitting winter hats and mittens.

But it doesn’t end with our employees. Our service events have now grown to include Timberland vendors, distributors, supplier factories, consumers, community members, and friends and family. Organizations as diverse as the Hong Chi School in Hong Kong, which serves those with intellectual disabilities; Legambiente, an Italian environmental organization; and the Seacoast Science Center of Rye, New Hampshire, an educational facility near Timberland’s headquarters, all join us in the effort to make a difference in the world.

We are also fortunate that our new parent company, VF Corporation, supports Timberland’s values-driven brand and mission to equip people to make a difference in the communities where they live and work. We look forward to partnering with VF’s Outdoor & Action Sports Coalition to grow our commitment to service beyond our own corporate walls.

As Atlanta McIlwraith, senior manager of community engagement for Timberland, puts it, “What’s so powerful about our service program is the many ripples it creates. As we send people to service sites, their direct impact ripples out to other organizations and the people they serve. Our belief is that when each employee has a service experience, it helps them become more engaged in their own community and on their own time. We hope this year’s 20th anniversary has re-energized our army of service warriors to continue to grow Timberland’s level of service.”

-- Download Celebrating 20 Years Of Service Around The World as PDF --

Financial security is an essential part of anyone’s livelihood. Yet 2.5 billion adults around the world don’t use formal financial services to save or borrow money. Empowering the working poor with proper knowledge and skill—and connecting them to financial products and services—can help them manage money more effectively, invest in economic opportunities, and reduce risks related to illness or loss of employment.

Timberland’s Sustainable Living Environment (SLE) program was developed to help ensure that the workers who make Timberland® products are able to meet their basic needs and have opportunities to better their lives. That’s why Timberland has been actively looking for ways to bring financial literacy and awareness to workers where need exists. Our Supplier Sustainability Team assesses potential need for all of our factory partners around the world, regardless of the supplier’s size.

Back in 2003, we partnered with CARE International to launch a microfinance program with one of our largest apparel suppliers, The YoungOne Corporation—a garment manufacturer that operates 14 factories in Bangladesh. With initial funding from Timberland, CARE and a local organization called MAMATA embarked on a project to improve the lives of 24,000 YoungOne garment workers in the Chittagong Export Processing Zone (CEPZ). In response to complaints of robbery on paydays, the program provided savings booths inside the factory, where employees could make deposits and withdrawals in the safety of the workplace. In addition, the program allowed workers access to small loans for health care, education, or income—generating activities to improve living conditions for themselves and their families.

Encouraged by the CEPZ program, Businesses for Social Responsibility (BSR) announced in November 2012 that it will create a HERfinance initiative that will help empower women financially around the globe. This program will build on the success of the organization’s HERproject, a health-awareness program that was launched in China in 2007, with the support of Timberland. To date, HERproject has promoted health education among more than 200,000 female workers in factories and farms in eight countries.

Following that model, the HERfinance project will provide essential training on budgeting, saving, and using formal financial services. The program will utilize a peer-educator approach that’s already achieved results for HERproject. In this model, workers—primarily women—volunteer to become peer educators to promote financial literacy among their co-workers, family members, and friends. The program is set to launch in 2013 in India, and four Timberland suppliers have already signed up to participate.

“I’ve seen the power of peer mentoring,” says Colleen Von Haden, Timberland’s senior manager for supplier sustainability and compliance. “Meeting these courageous, committed, trail-blazing women was a highlight of my career—one which inspired me to find more opportunities to empower women workers in our supply chain.”

We’re excited to participate because we’ve seen worker retention and morale increase over the years at YoungOne through our previous microfinancing program. Despite management’s initial concern to the contrary, we’ve seen that factory investment in the well-being of workers can result in increased productivity, higher quality products, and supplier resilience and reliability. According to Von Haden, “We’ve heard directly from leaders in the peer educator program that the microfinance program increases the desire to work.”

For example, Sultanan yasmin Kohinoor, a YoungOne employee from a poor family, lost her parents at a young age, but nevertheless studied hard and worked her way to the Workers’ Representation and Welfare Committee at YoungOne. She credits the CEPZ project staff for helping her develop her skills for facilitation and negotiation—and for making her a better leader. Similarly, Arifa, a field organizer from the garment workers’ community claims that, “We feel we are much more confident and are better able to plan for our futures. Our decision-making abilities have improved because we now have a better understanding of savings, credit, profit, and risk.”

Von Haden notes that Timberland partners with a number of organizations such as CARE, Verite, BSR, and Planet Water Foundation to address worker needs related to their physical and psychological well-being—including stress management and financial security. She explains that such programs wouldn’t be possible on the same scale without these organizations doing the groundwork with local NGOs or local service providers. “BSR’s involvement will broaden the reach of the microfinancing program and allow us to do ten times more than Timberland could do alone,” she explains.

-- Download Empowering Workers Through Financial Literacy as PDF --

Ever walk down the supermarket aisle and wonder how many soda and water bottles would end up in a landfill? If so, we invite you to walk down an aisle filled with Timberland^® footwear. In 2012, millions of used plastic bottles made their way into our shoes and boots.

With sustainability at the core of Timberland’s culture, we’re dedicated to developing products and materials that have reduced environmental impact. Our product line that best represents these values in action is the Earthkeepers^® collection, introduced in 2007.

“The idea is to put the most environmentally responsible materials possible into our products,” says Emily Alati, director of materials development for Timberland. “We created more and more material options to substitute for virgin raw materials where possible to meet this goal.”

One of those materials is recycled polyethylene terephthalate—commonly called PET—the plastic used to make water and soda bottles. Today it’s used in Timberland^® products for everything from linings, laces, uppers and insulation, to faux shearling and even the backing of faux fur.

Incorporating recycled PET into footwear design has not been as easy as simply swapping it in for another material. According to Alati, “If you’re going to incorporate an environmental approach, you have to design the product from the ground up. We must ensure that all products meet our style and performance standards—and keep an eye on cost.”

Timberland puts as much recycled content as possible into product design and works to ensure these choices are cost effective. We’ve even developed guidelines, under which every material that goes into our products must meet certain criteria. “Whether it’s a textile, leather, foam, or plastic that goes into the product, we research it extensively to make sure it’s the best available option,” Alati explains. Timberland® products use many different materials that incorporate recycled PET, including SmartWool^® faux shearling (made from merino wool and recycled PET), Polartec^® fabric, and Bionic^® canvas.

Timberland has even developed its own material. Our exclusive ReCanvas^™ fabric, a material with the look and feel of cotton canvas that’s made from 100% recycled PET. To create ReCanvas^™ fabric, Timberland partnered with one of its global suppliers—a weaving facility that specializes in innovative fabrics.

Alati says that Timberland has saved more than 75 million bottles from landfill by incorporating recycled PET materials into its footwear products. From an environmental standpoint, our commitment to using environmentally responsible materials has helped Timberland use fewer virgin materials while also decreasing our carbon footprint. Plans are in the works to measure how much CO2 the brand has saved from going into the Earth’s atmosphere as a result. From a business standpoint, there’s a bottom-line benefit, as well. “We’ve figured out a way to make a dramatically more eco-conscious product while still running our business successfully,” says Alati.

The Earthkeepers^® collection is now Timberland’s fastest growing and largest product line—demonstrating that consumers care deeply about eco-conscious products. “Our recycled materials look, feel and perform exactly like brand-new, virgin material,” Alati says. “Consumers don’t have to give up anything to know they’re helping make a difference to the environment.”

-- Download Saved From The Landfill, Put In Our Footwear as PDF --