Sustainability Report Q2

Sustainability Report

Q2 - April - June 2019

Big companies report their profits in quarterly earnings reports.  We think companies should be accountable for more than just profits. Our Sustainability at Reformation framework sets our goals and priorities for the next few years. Here is an update  on our progress so far.

Big companies report their profits in quarterly earnings reports. We think companies should be accountable for more than just profits. Our Sustainability at Reformation framework sets our goals and priorities for the next few years. Here is an update on our progress so far.

Our Factories

We work with incredible partners that share our values of accountability, transparency, and sustainability and make a real impact in the industry. We published our first Our Factories list  so you can learn more about the factories behind our clothes.

Transparency is key in promoting worker rights. We are accountable to ensure safe, healthy, and fair working conditions in all our factories. We know we’re not perfect, but we’ll always do our  best to be transparent and keep pushing for better.

We have 100% traceability of our Tier 1 suppliers and subcontractors
We work with 19 finished goods factories in Los Angeles, and 13 subcontractor facilities (e.g. printers and embroiderers)
Internationally, we have 16 suppliers across 18 factories in China, Italy, Turkey, and Morocco
Length of business relationship with our domestic suppliers:
69% 1-2 years 28% 2-5 years 3% 5+ years

Our Sustainable Partners Process:

Ratings of all of our vendors:

An audit is just a snapshot in time, so we prioritize active continuous improvement, root cause analysis and development of necessary management systems. Our audits may include confidential worker interviews and mobile phone surveys that provide deeper insight into worker satisfaction or other areas of improvement.

Jeans Redesign

We joined the Jeans Redesign project with Ellen MacArthur’s, Make Fashion Circular initiative. It basically means our teams are designing
with circularity in mind when it comes to: durability, material health, recyclability, and traceability. By 2021, the majority our jeans will meet high durability criteria, be made from regenerative or organic materials, and use zero toxic chemical processes.

Better Buying

We participated in the Better Buying initiative in order to receive anonymous feedback and data-driven insights into our purchasing activities. Our Q4 2018 feedback showed that we need to improve in Planning and Forecasting accuracy, so we’re evaluating how we can improve in this area. We run our own factory in LA which lets us pilot ideas for capacity building, efficiency and remediation efforts which helps us understand the real issues and be better partners to our other factories.

Living Wage

In 2019, our goal is to have 100% of our factory team earning at or above Los Angeles’ living wage threshold (as defined by MIT). To help us accomplish our goal, we’ve increased our internal minimum wage for all Refs and have another planned increase by the end of the year. We’re at 45% and are on track to hit our goal.

Ref × Osomtex

Less than 1% of material used to make clothing is recycled into new fabrics, which is equivalent to wasting a $100 billion worth of materials each year. That’s why we partner with Osomtex to upcycle our fabric scraps from our Factory in Los Angeles.

Impact so far:

28,288
Pounds of fabric scraps up-cycled

Equivalent savings:

Never not circulating

There is actually enough clothing and textiles in existence today to meet our global annual demand. In 2019, our goal is to reuse or recycle at least 100,000 garments through things like Ref Vintage sourcing, thredUP and Rent the Runway partnerships, and RefRecycling. We’ve already accomplished our goal, and we’re half way through the year–keep up the good work!

Impact so far:

155,194
Garments reused or recycled

Equivalent savings:

97
metric tons of waste

Sexy math

RefScale tracks our product environmental footprint in terms of water, carbon dioxide, and waste. The whole equation follows the lifecycle of clothes—everything from growing textile fibers and making fabric, dyeing, moving materials, manufacturing, packaging, shipping, garment care, and even recycling clothes when you’re done with them. We offset our footprint 100%, but always push for better materials, factories, and operations to keep our footprint as low as possible.

Here’s our impact from last quarter:

Here’s what percentage we saved this quarter compared to most clothes bought in the US:

Next up

We want to be able to answer “who made our clothes” at every level of the supply chain in order to assess the full environmental and social impact of our products. This is why we require our suppliers to provide us with sourcing information and all third-party certificates for our fabrics. But we still have a lot of work to do–supply chains are fragmented and complex. We’re building systems in order to better track and evaluate lower tiers of our supply chain so look for more traceability of Tiers 2 and beyond next.