Gucci goes carbon neutral

Gucci Announces Plans to Help Save the Planet

Italy’s biggest fashion house is going entirely carbon neutral

Gucci goes carbon neutral

“The planet has gone too far” Gucci’s chief executive Marco Bizzarri told The Guardian when announcing their plans to go completely carbon neutral by the end of this month.

The news comes after the Italian house rolled out its 10-year sustainability plan in 2015. They even  launched an online platform “designed to connect people, planet and purpose” in 2018. And now 2019 sees the unveiling of their plans to go completely carbon neutral – which is their most impressive commitment yet, officially making them the world’s most environmentally friendly fashion house.

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A new era of corporate accountability is upon us and we need to be diligent in taking all steps to mitigate our impacts, including being transparent and responsible for our [greenhouse gas] emissions across our supply chains,” Bizzarri reiterated said in a statement from the company. 

And for transparency’s sake, Bizzarri clarified that “the only way we can have zero emissions is to shut our business,” hence their commitment to being ‘carbon-neutral’ rather than ‘carbon free’, terms that are often equated and misused.

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As for Gucci, going carbon-neutral means that the company will be removing the same amount of carbon dioxide from the environment as they emit. As it stands, production accounts for 90 per cent of Gucci’s greenhouse gas emissions, so they’re going to be eliminating all the carbon emissions they can from their supply chain, and offsetting the rest. 

To do this, they’ve partnered up with Redd+ (a UN project) and have committed themselves to four forest conservation projects in Peru, Kenya, Indonesia and Cambodia.

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Offsetting carbon emission has been subject to critique as only a temporary solution. But as Bizzarri put it,if we wait to be perfect, in terms of the calculation of impact or methodology, to me it’s just an excuse for not doing it,” he said. “More and more, we just need to act. We are not perfect [and] it’s not a matter of saying we are the best, it’s a matter of showing it can be done, and hopefully [others] will follow this path.”

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