Sustainability Report Q2 update
The Sustainability Report
The Sustainability Report
Big companies report their profits in quarterly earnings reports. We all should be accountable for more than just that. That’s why sustainability is at the core of everything we do.
And for our Q2 report this year, we’ve expanded our People portion to include our efforts and focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Because racial justice is inherently linked with environmental justice, and we must prioritize both in order to further our work in sustainability.
Here’s a look at where we are in our four main areas:
People
There are a lot of awesome people behind our clothes. They work in our offices, factories, supply chains, and stores. They are our partners and vendors. They’re all over the place, really. And we are responsible to ensure safe, healthy, and equitable working conditions for every single one of them.
People
There are a lot of awesome people behind our clothes. They work in our offices, factories, supply chains, and stores. They are our partners and vendors. They’re all over the place, really. And we are responsible to ensure safe, healthy, and equitable working conditions for every single one of them.
We’re committed to making Reformation a great work environment and brand that reflects and respects the rich diversity of this world.
Diversity at Ref today
There is a lot of work for us to do here, and we’re taking steps that move us closer to becoming a truly representative and inclusive organization. We’re serious about environmental sustainability, so we must also be serious about racial justice as the two are inextricably linked.
What we’ve done so far
• We’ve hired DEI experts and advisors to help guide our plans and policies.
• Our third-party investigation into allegations of racism at Reformation is underway and is planned to be completed by September.
• We’ve launched a third-party hotline in partnership with AllVoices to create a safe inclusive culture where everyone feels heard. Employees can anonymously report any concerns related to workplace issues, culture, diversity, bias, or general feedback.
• We’ve created spaces to hear from employees about their varied experiences at Reformation, conducting over 30 focus groups in the past month.
• We’ve continued our commitment to living wage and as of July 1, 2020, 100% of Ref employees are earning a living wage.
• We’ve launched the Reformation Relief Fund, which provides short-term monetary assistance to help bridge the gap for team members experiencing significant financial hardship.
• We’ve made updates to our volunteer time off, vacation, holiday, and company calendar to make time off more equitable at Ref.
What we’re working on
• We’re building our DEI Advisory Board, including a board charter, structure, and initial list of advisors.The board will serve as an independent advisory body that will ensure Reformation takes meaningful steps to advance DEI and will track its progress publicly using rigorous metrics. We will launch the DEI board by October of 2020.
• We’re revisiting our company values to better reflect our priorities and commitments.
• In the next few months, we will hold expert led inclusive culture workshops for all of our teams, including focused sessions for leadership and management, that critically examine inequity, elevate self-awareness, introduce practical inclusion, and integrate overtly anti-racist behaviors into our daily practices.
• We’re committed to having Black representation on our leadership team by December of 2020.
• We’re developing hiring and retention targets to ensure that Reformation is growing and retaining a representative workforce and leadership team.
• We’re actively building out our People and Retail teams, with a focus on leadership. We’re currently recruiting for our Chief People Officer & Head of Retail.
• We’re re-evaluating our marketing, imagery, and voice to ensure we are representative of a broader Reformation community. We’re working with more diverse creators, models, and partners.
• We’re working to gather and share deeper demographic information on our company make-up, including but not limited to ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, which will be provided on a volunteer basis.
• We’re organizing employee resource groups which are voluntary, employee-led groups based on common backgrounds or demographic factors such as gender, race, or ethnicity to help employees build community, expand networks, amplify historically under-represented voices, and actively inform business leaders.
We’re committed to doing this work and dedicating the time, attention, and resources. We’re equally dedicated to tracking our progress and sharing it openly.
100% of Ref employees earn a living wage
100% of Ref employees earn a living wage
A living wage is defined as the minimum income necessary for a worker to attain a basic standard of living. Living wages provide the means for an individual/family to purchase goods and services like food, energy, education, housing, transportation, health care, and are key to ending cycles of poverty that have lasted for generations.
Our goal for 2020 was to have 100% of our Ref team meet or exceed living wage. Despite the challenges of COVID-19, we are focused on putting our people first, and we’re excited to announce that as of July 1, 2020, 100% of employees are earning a living wage.
→ Meet our team
We also work with incredible partners that share our values of accountability, transparency, and sustainability and make a real impact in the industry. We know we’re not perfect, but we’ll always do our best to be transparent and keep pushing for better.
We require all our direct cut, sew & finish manufacturing partners to adhere to our Code of Conduct (basically our requirements for ethical operations) to ensure fair labor conditions and fundamental labor rights like prohibiting child labor, forced labor, protecting the health and safety, and meeting or exceeding legal minimum requirements in the locales where they work.
Our suppliers participate in independent, third-party social assessments to ensure fair, safe and healthy working conditions and continuous improvement.
Here is where we’ve made our stuff so far this year:
56% Los Angeles
34% China
8% Turkey
2% Morocco
1% Mexico
Here is where we’ve made our stuff so far this year:
¹ For living wage methodologies, we’ve referenced the following: The United States living wage is defined by MIT referencing “1 adult + 0 children”.
Product
How and where we make our product matters. We focus on things like traceability, fiber standards, and clean chemistry to ensure positive environmental and social impacts of our stuff.
Product
How and where we make our product matters. We focus on things like traceability, fiber standards, and clean chemistry to ensure positive environmental and social impacts of our stuff.
Traceability is about knowing exactly where our stuff comes from. We want to be able to answer “who made our clothes” at every level of the supply chain to ensure positive environmental and social impacts of our stuff.
Our goal for 2020 was to reach 100% traceability into our Tier 1 & 2 suppliers—we’re half way through the year and we’ve made it.
Tier 1
Finished goods assemblers & subcontractors
Tier 2
Dyers & printers; finishers, weavers, knitters
Tier 3
Fibers, spinners, recycled material collector/processor
Tier 4
Raw material (Farm, Forest, Ranch)
Supply chains are fragmented and complex. So now, we’re working on going deeper at the fiber, forest, and farm level. For example, our focus will be to understand exactly from which forest the wood pulp for our viscose is harvested and from which cotton farms our ginners and yarn spinners source so we can take accountability for responsible practices all the way through our supply chain.
Up to 2/3 of our sustainability impact happens before the clothes have actually been made.
Up to 2/3 of our sustainability impact happens at the raw materials stage—before the clothes have actually been made.
Fiber selection affects how you’re going to wash the garment and potentially recycle it one day—both important factors to consider when it comes to the environmental impact. That’s why we have our own Ref fiber standards. We tried to make these standards as holistic as possible, taking into consideration water input, energy input, land use, eco-toxicity, greenhouse gas emissions, human toxicity, availability and price. We also looked at garment care implications, like microfiber shedding.¹
Good news: 86% of our fabrics meet A/B ratings²
We are a proud member of the CanopyStyle Initiative to help drive positive change for our forest products and ensure that all our forest-based products come from sustainably managed forests.
Our Better Viscose in our B category is sourced from producers that are on the path to meeting (or in some cases have already met) requirements to only source from forests that are conserved, protected, and restored.
→ Learn more about Ref fiber standards
54% of our dyers and printers have a clean chemical certification for our materials
54% of our dyers and printers have a clean chemical certification for our materials
We’re passionate about working with our partner printers, dye houses and tanneries to ensure responsible use of chemicals, water and energy so that products are safe for workers, you and the environment.
Our goal for 2020 was to have 75% of our fabrics be certified clean by third-party certifications like Oeko Tex Standard 100 and Bluesign.³ Due to decreased volume from COVID-19, we were unable to meet the minimum yardage requirements to work with one of our primary certified dye houses. So our performance in this area is lower than last quarter, but we are continuing to build our relationships with certified partners and expect to see progress as our production scales back up.
¹ We published our methodology and sources so you can really dig in and understand what we include in our standards.
² Fiber performance is based on the majority fiber content in the fiber composition. Calculated for fabrics used in Q2 2020.
³ Clean chemistry statistics are calculated by unique printer and dyer count. Certifications included in this total are Oeko-Tex Standard 100, Bluesign, Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), Global Recycled Standard (GRS). Calculated for facilities that were used in Q2 2020.
Planet
We keep our true costs—including environmental impact—in mind when we make design and business decisions. Our environmental footprint is calculated in terms of gallons of water, pounds of CO2e, and pounds of waste.
Planet
We keep our true costs—including environmental impact—in mind when we make design and business decisions. Our environmental footprint is calculated in terms of gallons of water, pounds of CO2e, and pounds of waste.
RefScale tracks our environmental footprint by adding the pounds of carbon dioxide emitted, gallons of water used, and pounds of waste generated. Then we calculate how much Reformation saves compared to conventional clothes bought in the US. The whole equation follows the lifecycle of clothes—everything from growing textile fibers and making fabric, dyeing, transporting materials, manufacturing, packaging, shipping, garment care, and even recycling clothes when you’re done with them.¹
We offset our product footprint 100%, but always push for better materials, factories, and operations to keep our footprint as low as possible.
2020 YTD total footprint
¹ We publish our methodology on our website so you can really dig in and understand what we include in the calculations.
Progress
In order to push sustainability forward, we challenge our efforts and take risks to solve hard problems. We are committed to investing in the future, leading the way for a more sustainable fashion system, and will share our progress openly.
Progress
In order to push sustainability forward, we challenge our efforts and take risks to solve hard problems. We are committed to investing in the future, leading the way for a more sustainable fashion system, and will share our progress openly.
There is actually enough clothing and textiles in existence today to meet our annual demand globally. We upped our goal to reuse or recycle 200,000 garments a year. We’re half way through the year and we’ve already exceeded our goal.
272,027
Garments reused or recycled¹
272,027
Garments reused or recycled¹
Equivalent to taking 465 cars off the road, 31 olympic sized pools of water, 9 garbage trucks of waste²
COVID-19 is disproportionately affecting BIPOC, the homeless community, and at-risk individuals in the LBGTQ+ community. So through the month of July we donated a mask for every mask purchased or donated on our site. We’re distributing masks to: Until We Do It, The White Mountain Apache Tribe, Los Angeles Mission Shelters, Los Angeles LGBT Center.
→ Let’s make masks
¹ This includes RefVintage, Rent-the-Runway, and thredUP.
² CO2 equivalency comes from the EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator, water equivalency is based on the total volume of an olympic sized pool, and waste equivalency is based on the average amount of waste a garbage truck can hold.
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
The fashion industry has a major impact on the global economy and the environment. That’s why we have aligned our sustainability framework with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to make sure we’re tackling the most important issues like climate change and economic inequality.
→ Learn more