New environmental and social label for Caleres
Footwear group Caleres has introduced a new programme for presenting its shoes as sustainable – its One Planet Standard.
Amajor footwear group, Caleres, has developed a new, in-house programme, its One Planet Standard, through which it aims to promote the environmental and social credentials of its products. Caleres, formerly Brown Shoe, is the parent group of a list of 15 brands, including Allen Edmonds, Franco Sarto, Famous Footwear, Sam Edelman, Vionic and Vince.
According to the group, the One Planet Standard will consider the sustainability of products across their entire lifecycle.
The standard is based on six key pillars: sample reduction, materials, packaging, supplier environmental and social governance (ESG) initiatives, brand philanthropy, and end-of-life solutions. This builds on an existing programme the group has in place, its Sustainable Footwear Index, which gives scores for how shoes, boots, sneakers and sandals rate in the different categories. Only the top performers, in terms of sustainability, will qualify for the One Planet Standard.
Degree of difficulty
“Each shoe will be assessed and graded, from start to finish,” the group has said, “with sustainability measures that require more effort and investment receiving more points.” It will apply the new One Planet Standard designation only to products that already score 51% or more on the Sustainable Footwear Index.
Of the six categories that these initiatives cover, the second is the one that will attract most attention from leather manufacturers, with its focus on materials. Using what the group calls “environmentally preferred materials” is an important factor in steering shoes towards a high enough score.
Group director of product sourcing and sustainability, Andee Burton, explains that this drive towards environmentally preferred materials is something Caleres announced in 2019, with targets to work towards by 2025. An environmentally preferred material is one that is “better for the environment versus a conventional material”, Ms Burton explains, adding that usage of them has increased year on year since the launch of the idea. Factors that the group takes into consideration in assessing what ‘better’ means here include carbon emissions, water use, social factors in manufacturing, and chemical use.
Material difference
There are specific characteristics that different materials have to display to earn the designation ‘environmentally preferred’. In the case of fabric, for example, Caleres has decided that only materials containing at least 51% recycled content, with third-party certification to back up manufacturers’ claims, can qualify. Cotton that the group uses in its products must contain at least 21% certified organic fibres to fit the bill.
Consequences of this policy include diverting more than 125 million plastic bottles away from landfill in the course of the last four years, with the material going into the group’s products instead. This means there is less need for manufacturers to use fossil fuels taken out of the ground to produce plastic for Caleres, reducing the group’s reliance on what Ms Burton describes as, traditionally, the first processing point of making polyester. “The extraction point and the polymerisation stage are where the biggest volumes of energy and emissions come from,” she adds.
Another consequence is that more than 20 of the partner factories that make shoes for the group are now part of a dedicated programme for reducing its own production waste. By 2025, it wants all of the strategic factories in its manufacturing supply chain, of which there are just under 40, to take part in this initiative. Using the reduce-reuse-recycle methodology and waste-to-energy initiatives, the material going to landfill from the participating shoe plants so far has gone down by an average of close to 90%.
Unparalleled leather
Leather matters too, of course. Caleres has said: “Leather offers unparalleled craft, comfort, quality, fit and durability. However, the production of leather uses processes and materials that can impact the environment.” For shoes that have leather uppers, where the material comes from and how it is produced, contribute to a product’s overall score on the Sustainable Footwear Index and to the likelihood of its becoming a One Planet Standard product.
The group says it wants to help reduce the environmental impact of leather by sourcing from tanneries that are audited by independent third parties. In this, it includes tanneries certified as silver or gold by the Leather Working Group, those with Oeko-Tex certification or Italy’s ICEC, with a rating of ‘good’ or higher.
Top twenty
In 2022, Ms Burton points out, 75% of the footwear the group brought to market contained at least one ‘environmentally preferred’ material. “So if you purchased a shoe from one of our 15 brands, most likely it did contain at least one of these,” she adds. Choosing leather shoes will further enhance the chance of this because in 2022, an even higher proportion, 85%, of the leather Caleres used was environmentally preferred. By 2025, its goal is to increase this to 100% of the leather it sources.
According to Ms Burton, Caleres wants the One Planet Standard to be a goal worth the hard work necessary to achieve it. “We developed this standard to be comprehensive,” she explains. “That’s why sustainability measures that require more effort and investment to achieve receive more points.” By way of illustration, she explains that, if three-quarters of Caleres products containing at least one environmentally preferred material seems a good percentage, early indications are that One Planet Standard designation will go to a much smaller group of products, only 20% of the total.
Leather loafers from Vionic. Parent group Caleres classes 85% of the leather it used in 2022 as “environmentally preferred”. By 2025, this will apply to all of the leather it sources.
All credits: Caleres
