Suppose you were to create the most environmentally sensitive shoe Timberland had ever made. You’d want the finished product to be high quality, crafted from eco-conscious materials and manufactured with as little energy as possible, right? That’s exactly the idea behind the Earthkeepers® Hookset Handcrafted collection, which Timberland introduced this spring.
Our Earthkeepers® line is grounded in a philosophy of reducing our impact on the planet while making premium gear. To do that, we strive to incorporate organic and recycled materials into the design, seek to minimize environmental impacts in our manufacturing processes, and offer transparency in the form of our Green Index® rating, which lets you compare the impact of one pair of Timberland® footwear to another.
So, when Pete Lankford, Design Director for Earthkeepers and Timberland Boot Company, began thinking about a new Earthkeepers® collection, he wanted to create something that would exemplify the philosophy.
Four materials, expertly combined
“The Hookset Handcrafted collection is all about simplicity,” Lankford says. “We started with the question: ‘If we could only work with four materials, what would those be?’ We knew the materials would have to be things people were familiar with—things that they trusted. But we also knew they had to be attractive and durable.”
The four materials the team chose are:
- Organic cotton
- Natural rubber
- Aluminum
- Leather pieces
Lankford notes that all of these materials are eco-conscious. Latex rubber, for example, is sourced right from the living tree, and organic cotton is grown without toxic fertilizers or pesticides. Even the leather represents clever repurposing: some of the leather details in the Hookset Handcrafted collection were sourced right from the cutting room floor—and all leather in the collection is LWG silver-rated. In fact, the footwear has proven so popular that the factory ran out of leather scraps and used non-scrap LWG silver-rated leather to fulfill some of the orders.
The Earthkeepers® Hookset collection is made by hand and dyed individually, honoring Timberland’s proud tradition of handcrafted footwear. Because the collection is handmade and requires less machinery to make, it’s cost-effective to produce. Additionally, using fewer materials and making shoes by hand reduces its environmental impact, allowing the collection to achieve an average score of 3.5 out of 10 on Timberland’s Green Index® scoring system—the lowest score in the history of the company.
“When we set out to create the Earthkeepers® collection, our goal was to produce footwear that’s every bit as premium as everything else we make, and made with less impact to the planet,” says Lankford. “The Hookset Handcrafted collection marks a major milestone—proving that quality, durability and craftsmanship can coexist with eco-sensitivity and create a remarkable shoe.”
Hear from Pete Lankford directly and learn more about the collection here.
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You can’t make good shoes without good-quality leather. And that has long posed an ethical issue for Timberland. Namely, as an environmentally progressive firm, what can we do to reduce the environmental impacts required by the tanning process?
We’re not the only ones to have asked that question. Several brands have been conducting audits over the years—bringing confusion and even conflicting standards to the tanneries. In April 2005, Timberland and a number of other brands formed a coalition called the Leather Working Group (LWG), an organization with the objective of developing and maintaining a protocol that assesses the compliance and environmental performance of tanners, and promoting sustainable and appropriate environmental business practices within the leather industry.
“Initially, there was pushback from the tanneries, who said, ‘We don’t need another audit’” reveals Rick LaTouch, Senior Manager of Leather Development at Timberland. However, once tanneries realized the benefit of creating alignment on environmental issues the improvement was exponential. LWG environmental audits are conducted 18 months apart, and the results between first and subsequent audits for all participating tanneries were overall reductions of 15 to 20 percent in water and energy use. Tanneries have also seen improvements in air emissions, water effluent quality, waste, and restricted substance handling.
LWG audited tanneries were soon setting the standard for environmental performance in the footwear leather industry. Two tanneries with whom Timberland does business illustrate the effectiveness of the LWG.
PrimeAsia Tanning
PrimeAsia Tanning was among the tannery and footwear brands that founded the LWG. Located in China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, PrimeAsia is a primary leather provider to Timberland’s global footwear supply chain.
“The LWG provides a collaborative environment where all tanneries are held to high environmental standards within the leather industry,” says Steve Savino, vice president of sales and marketing for PrimeAsia. “We expected that LWG audits would help us focus on documenting our energy usage, provide a benchmark for comparison against other audited tanneries, and help us identify opportunities for decreasing our energy and water usage.”
Has the LWG succeeded in achieving this goal? According to Savino, PrimeAsia’s involvement in LWG has resulted in substantial water and energy savings. For example, PrimeAsia Vietnam has implemented a solar farm to provide the tannery with its hot-water needs for manufacturing, and also upgraded the efficiency of its steam boilers. These achievements helped the tannery achieve Gold status according to its last LWG audit. PrimeAsia’s China and Taiwan facilities purchase steam from a nearby industry, which would otherwise be unused – contributing to those tanneries’ Gold and Silver status (respectively). “We also went from no water recycling to a corporate average of approximately 40% of water recycled within our facilities,” Savino reports. “PrimeAsia’s environmental improvement projects have resulted in production efficiencies and financial benefits.”
ISA Tan Tec
Located in China and Vietnam, ISA Tan Tec is another primary source of leather for Timberland® footwear. In 2006, Tan Tec organized a coalition of Foreign Tanners in China (FTC), inviting other tanneries to join them for roundtable discussions and other projects aimed at raising awareness of the need for environmental reform within the industry. As a result, the collaboration proposed by the LWG made sense. “Our participation in the LWG was a natural consequence and development of the FTC and enabled us to move from a purely Chinese perspective to a global set of standards,” says Fanny Lan, Tan Tec’s EHS manager and assistant to the president in Guangzhou, China.
Between 2005 and 2010, Tan Tec reduced water consumption by 45.4%—a reduction that has resulted in savings not only in consumption, but also in treatment and discharge costs. “Despite ever-increasing costs in China, we have been able to decrease our water treatment cost by around 10%,” Lan says.
Another example is the reduction in power consumption. By investing in energy-saving equipment, such as new retanning drums that operate at one-third the speed of conventional drums, Guangzhou Tan Tec has reduced power consumption by 38% during that same time period. According to Lan, “Guangzhou Tan Tec has managed to keep the power cost on the same levels as in 2005, a cost that would have been almost doubled in 2010 had we not focused heavily on energy-reduction programs.”
Timberland’s Role
As a result of its commitment to the LWG, Timberland has set a target to source leather only from tanneries that are rated silver or higher—not an easy task for the factories in question. “Obtaining a medal isn’t easy,” LaTouch points out. “The protocol is dynamic and is regularly updated to ensure that it is challenging but achievable. Seldom does a tannery get audited the same way twice. The tanners understand that it’s good for the industry – and the planet.”
Lan agrees. “Timberland today is the only brand who officially sets targets for tanneries’ environmental performance based on a minimum medal criterion. Guangzhou Tan Tec underwent the first LWG audit in 2007 and had prepared for this. The result was a silver medal, but further audits have increased our LWG rating to gold, which is something we are proud of,” she says, adding, “Daily decisions are taken with the eye to keep this status.”
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These days, there are countless apparel manufacturers and labels out there that make there own unique eco-conscious claims. Problem is, well, they’re unique. Meaning, nobody’s really on the same page on what truly constitutes an environmentally-friendly product. So what’s a consumer to believe? How can they make informed purchasing decisions when every company uses a different scorecard?
The answer, of course, is brand collaboration. Toward this end, an industry-wide group of leading apparel and footwear brands, retailers, manufacturers, non-governmental organizations, academic experts and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency came together to create the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) . The SAC is working to reduce the environmental and social impacts of apparel and footwear products around the world by developing common measurements and a common environmental understanding of products’ impacts across our industry.
To accomplish this, the SAC built on the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA) ’s Eco Index™, a standardized tool for measuring the environmental impacts of all outdoor products (things like boots, clothing, tents, and more). The Eco Index™ evaluates impacts in six key areas of a product’s lifecycle: Materials, Packaging, Product Manufacturing and Assembly, Transport and Distribution, Use of Service and End of Life.
The SAC adapted the Eco Index™ for apparel in an effort to give brands more control over reducing environmental impacts right from the outset, rather than relying on factories. “It’s like preventive health care,” explains Betsy Blaisdell, senior manager of environmental stewardship for Timberland. “It’s hard to say to a factory, ‘You have to do the clean-up,’ if the product is designed to create pollution. But when we can provide designers and developers with credible, practical, and universal standards for measuring environmental performance, then they can make more sustainable choices.”
Factories, too, will benefit from the Index, by having only one standard of measurement to respond to, rather than subtle differences among competing brands. In this way, suppliers will be able to focus more on solutions, rather than audits and testing.
Blaisdell hopes the SAC tool will similarly spur environmentally sustainable practices not only at Timberland, but across the entire apparel industry. “I also hope consumers will support brands that are active in the coalition,” she says. “These brands are committed to improving the environmental sustainability of our industry.”
The SAC’s adapted Eco Index™ is now being pilot tested in factories, which will determine whether the concept is workable in a real environment. The final index is expected to be released in 2012. While it will not be consumer facing at first, the hope is that it will soon be. Stay tuned for future updates!
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