ISKO denim, fabric fit for the conscious generation

The plan­et is in the news. With cli­mate break­down mak­ing the wrong kind of head­lines, envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness and activism is on the up, and young peo­ple are tak­ing to the streets.

They are also exer­cis­ing spend­ing pow­er at the retail check­out, says Rosey Cor­tazzi, glob­al mar­ket­ing direc­tor at ISKO, the largest den­im man­u­fac­tur­er under one roof in the world. “Cus­tomers, espe­cial­ly Gen Y and Gen Z, are pre­pared to walk away from com­pa­nies that can­not demon­strate they are good cor­po­rate cit­i­zens,” she says. “Trans­paren­cy and trace­abil­i­ty mat­ter.”

This desire for val­ue align­ment extends right across lifestyle choice-mak­ing in diet, health, beau­ty and fash­ion. “Just as peo­ple are con­cerned about the food they put in their bod­ies, they ques­tion what they wear on their skin, con­scious of the envi­ron­men­tal and social impact of their choic­es,” says Ms Cor­tazzi.

Rise of the con­scious con­sumer

Evi­dence of con­scious con­sumerism is every­where. The most recent Cone Com­mu­ni­ca­tions CSR Study found that almost nine out of ten Amer­i­cans (87 per cent) would pur­chase a prod­uct because a com­pa­ny advo­cat­ed for an issue. Going one step fur­ther, near­ly as many (76 per cent) would active­ly with­hold mon­ey from a com­pa­ny sup­port­ing con­trary beliefs.

What is more, the youth vote is even stronger. Glob­al­We­bIndex sur­veys found mil­len­ni­als (aged 22 to 35) most like­ly to pay more for eco-friend­ly prod­ucts last year, with Gen Z (16 to 21 year olds) next.

Inter­est­ing­ly, the mar­ket play­er that respon­dents ranked most respon­si­ble for the future of the envi­ron­ment, sec­ond only to them­selves as indi­vid­u­als and con­sumers, was not gov­ern­ment, brands or celebri­ties, but man­u­fac­tur­ers and pro­duc­tion bod­ies.

Fun­da­men­tal­ly, con­sumers know it’s the mak­ers that count; mak­ers not just of things, but of rep­u­ta­tions and change.

Stan­dards for sus­tain­abil­i­ty

So what can brands and retail­ers do? First and fore­most they should dri­ve sup­ply chain account­abil­i­ty by ask­ing tough ques­tions and audit­ing not only their tier-one sup­pli­ers, but also tier two and three.

ISKO, as a den­im mill, would be con­sid­ered a tier-two sup­pli­er, but that does not jus­ti­fy any drop in stan­dards, argues Ms Cor­tazzi. “Every­thing we make is pro­duced in a respon­si­ble way and you don’t just have to take our word for that,” she says. “The pin­na­cle of our sus­tain­abil­i­ty offer, the ISKO Earth Fit col­lec­tion, has obtained two inde­pen­dent cer­ti­fi­ca­tions.”

More often seen on cos­met­ics and house­hold prod­ucts, these are the strin­gent Nordic Swan Eco­la­bel and EU Eco­la­bel, both of which are direct­ly recog­nised by the end-con­sumer.

Togeth­er they ver­i­fy mul­ti­ple respon­si­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria: no use of pro­hib­it­ed and harm­ful sub­stances; reduced envi­ron­men­tal impact; strict sus­tain­abil­i­ty require­ments for organ­ic cot­ton and recy­cled fibres, dyes and col­orants; plus assur­ances that the health of both work­ers and con­sumers is con­sid­ered upper­most.

Fight­ing fak­ery and green­wash

In an era of fake news and so-called green­wash, it is vital envi­ron­men­tal and eth­i­cal claims actu­al­ly stack up, says Ms Cor­tazzi. “Right now, it is a night­mare for buy­ers, design­ers and CEOs, as every gar­ment fac­to­ry or mill is claim­ing sus­tain­able cre­den­tials,” she says. “Retail indus­try pro­fes­sion­als want to do the right thing, but often don’t have cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty experts to sup­port them. This is why it is real­ly impor­tant to ensure claims are backed by a third par­ty.”

Every­thing at ISKO has been ver­i­fied. In fact, ISKO has obtained life-cycle assess­ments for every one of its more than 25,000 prod­ucts. By doing so, it achieved a world first, becom­ing the only den­im man­u­fac­tur­er ever to obtain pre-cer­ti­fied envi­ron­men­tal prod­uct dec­la­ra­tions (EPDs).

Just as peo­ple are con­cerned about the food they put in their bod­ies, they ques­tion what they wear on their skin, con­scious of the envi­ron­men­tal and social impact of their choic­es

These EPDs assess the life cycle of prod­ucts, and pro­vide data on the water usage and car­bon foot­print per square metre of fab­ric to enable buy­ers and cus­tomers to make respon­si­ble sourc­ing choic­es with clar­i­ty and con­fi­dence.

Com­mit­ted to rais­ing aware­ness and stan­dards of envi­ron­men­tal and busi­ness ethics, ISKO is a mem­ber of both sup­ply chain plat­form SEDEX and the Eth­i­cal Trad­ing Ini­tia­tive. It is also a sig­na­to­ry to the Social & Labour Con­ver­gence Project, sup­port­ing and pro­mot­ing employ­ees’ rights and work­ers’ wel­fare.

Respon­si­bil­i­ty in the round

A tru­ly strate­gic and sys­temic approach to sus­tain­abil­i­ty calls for joined-up think­ing and actions, says Ms Cor­tazzi. “At ISKO, it is about a 360-degree approach. We pro­mote a holis­tic mind­set with a long­stand­ing focus on respon­si­bil­i­ty, inno­va­tion and cit­i­zen­ship,” she says. “This goes beyond just using low-impact mate­ri­als, and extends to our cul­ture and sys­tems.”

Cer­ti­fied to inter­na­tion­al stan­dards, an envi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment sys­tem ensures robust mea­sure­ment and mon­i­tor­ing of a full range of impacts at ISKO pro­duc­tion facil­i­ties, includ­ing ener­gy, water, waste, chem­i­cals and emis­sions.

This bedrock of sus­tain­able pro­duc­tion under­pins cut­ting-edge research and devel­op­ment under­tak­en at ISKO. Every fab­ric, from the tra­di­tion­al den­im to new­ly patent­ed tech­nolo­gies, is a tes­ta­ment to the com­pa­ny ethos of respon­si­ble inno­va­tion.

Spring­board for inno­va­tion

Inno­va­tion is sim­ply the norm at ISKO. With 20 exist­ing patents and over 100 more in the pipeline, the research and devel­op­ment team of sci­en­tists, biol­o­gists and physi­cists is con­stant­ly com­ing up with new ideas.

Many of these inno­va­tions give ISKO a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, while bring­ing a respon­si­ble ben­e­fit for the plan­et, too.

ISKO Pop, for exam­ple, keeps a com­bi­na­tion of com­fort and a unique silky-soft feel in a gar­ment, no mat­ter how many times it is washed, min­imis­ing use of fab­ric soft­en­ers and chem­i­cals.

ISKO Recall is a durable shape-mem­o­ry fab­ric so jeans retain their flat­ter­ing fit bet­ter and require less wash­ing, sav­ing water and ener­gy, as well as cut­ting down on car­bon emis­sions.

ISKO Cot­tonized is a fab­ric entire­ly derived from man-made fibres cre­at­ing the same look, drape and wash-down as tra­di­tion­al den­im. Reduc­ing the need to grow cot­ton, it frees up land for food crops, sav­ing on water, ener­gy and emis­sions.

Report­ing the road ahead

Tak­en togeth­er, all these sus­tain­abil­i­ty ini­tia­tives place ISKO in the van­guard of cur­rent best prac­tice, but there is always fur­ther to go and a bet­ter road to trav­el, Ms Cor­tazzi con­cludes. “One of our next projects will be to cre­ate a full sus­tain­abil­i­ty report. This will allow us to com­mu­ni­cate to our cus­tomers our achieve­ments to date and artic­u­late future tar­gets, visions and poli­cies on envi­ron­ment, peo­ple, mate­r­i­al and fibres.

“When it comes to our respon­si­ble strat­e­gy, at ISKO, we do not believe in stand­ing still. We believe quite the oppo­site, which is doing more and stretch­ing our­selves to the lim­it.”

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please vis­it iskodenim.com