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Have you heard about Tommy Hilfiger’s Make a Promise Campaign? The company is making a big splash about the money it’s giving a rural region of Uganda – all “in the hope of making long-term changes that will benefit generations”.

Rank a Brand has several problems with this campaign – and they all add up to one conclusion. Tommy Hilfiger is greenwashing its sparse and patchy CSR record. And it is doing so very cheaply indeed, especially given its scale.

Applause for the work on the ground
First things first, this campaign supports Millennium Villages. These are the good guys who actually do all the hard work: helping farmers to commercialize, building new school facilities, securing fresh water and providing medical services. We salute what they do. Take a look at their website and see how you can support them.

Crunch the numbers: it’s a tip
In 2009, the Tommy Hilfiger Corporate Foundation (their philanthropic arm) announced a €1,5 million (€1,500,000) commitment to Millenium Villages. This will be handed out over five years in the Ruhiira region of Uganda. In 2010, Tommy Hilfiger posted total global retail sales of €3,5 billion (€3,500,000,000). Given these revenues, the pledge amounts to the equivalent of the average Joe who earns €33,000 giving €2.87 each year to a charity.

Not close to covering Ruhiira’s needs
Millenium Villages needs €45 per person each year in donations for each of their projects. With approximately 50,000 villagers in Ruhiira, Millenium Vilages needs €2.3 million annually. By pledging €1,5 million over 5 years, Tommy Hilfiger is contributing around 13% of the project’s annual donor requirements.

Tommy Hilfiger benefits
Tommy Hilfiger is pushing this campaign hard: with a billboard campaign, in-store marketing materials, online advertising, a twitter competition, a micro-site, and celebrity sponsorship (thank you, Katie Holmes). And of course the cocktail parties. This kind of PR campaign does not come cheap – the bill for these activities almost certainly amounts to many millions of euros. The press and blog coverage of this campaign is pretty much all full of praise. In other words, the PR campaign is a success – and that’s hugely valuable to a consumer brand – and all for a pretty small outlay.

Tommy Hilfiger’s exploitation of the poor
Tommy Hilfiger has so far been a laggard when it comes to improving labour conditions in its own supply chains. So far it has been not transparent and uncooperative, while its clothing is produced by some of the poorest and most easily exploited people in the world. Tommy’s lack of transparency is reflected in the extremely low score in our rating.

Bangladesh
A year ago, 29 people died in fire at a Bangladeshi factory where Tommy Hilfiger clothing was produced – they were trapped inside because several of the fire exits had been locked. When ABC news (shocking footage!) confronted Tommy Hilfiger himself about what had been done to improve conditions at these factories, he said his company would never make clothes at those facilities again. Which was a lie. As Tommy was forced to admit in an interview with, yes, ABC news.

Indonesia, India
Heavy labour problems were also found in one of Tommy’s Indonesian factories, where workers were fired after joining a labour union. It took the labour movement more than two years of campaigning before Tommy helped solving the problem. Reports on violations against young women workers in India were never followed up by Tommy.

Time to change
We don’t want Tommy Hilfiger to stop supporting Ruhiira. And we’re not demanding that it starts giving Ruhiira more money. We just want to point out that if Tommy Hilfiger really wants to “make long-term changes that will benefit generations”, it should look closer to home – and start empowering and protecting the people who work in its factories.

Join the #makeapromise twitter campaign and ask Tommy Hilfiger to end poverty of his garment workers.

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The CSR season has started. Loads of CSR reports are made public every year in spring – mainly by fashion brands. H&M is among the first to bring out its 2011 report ‘Conscious Actions’. With this report, the brand shows the world that it wants to be the world’s eco fast fashion leader.

A report stuffed with impressive numbers gives us the impression that H&M really does its best to achieve this goal. In the past year, the brand used recycled polyester to a stunning equivalent of 9.2 million plastic bottles. It also produced almost 2.5 million pairs of shoes using lower-impact water-based solvents. Furthermore, in 2010 H&M outstripped Walmart as the biggest buyer of organic cotton, and they have kept this number one position throughout 2011.

Yet, the question remains whether fast fashion can actually really be sustainable. When a brand sells about ten collections a year – like H&M does – this also leads to a fashion item being tossed into the litter bin about ten times as quickly. Being the world’s second largest clothing retailer, they sell approximately 550 million fashion items a year. While the production of organic cotton does require far less water than conventional cotton, it still takes a whole lot of water to grow the organic cotton required for these amounts of clothes.

Therefore, we took another close look at H&M to find out to what extent the new report actually affects the sustainability ranking of the brand. H&M in fact gains 2 extra points, for the following reasons:

• Material use: the percentage of organic cotton has increased up to 7.6% of the total cotton collection.
• Labour conditions: H&M is highly transparent about its audits in supplier factories. On average, in 2011, at least one audit has been carried out in every factory. According to H&M, in 77% of these audits the factory proved to have met their Code of Conduct entirely. That is a high percentage. Still, it has to be noted that the audits seem to be carried out by the brand itself, and not by the independent Fair Labor Association – even though H&M is a member.

Also worth mentioning, is the ‘Energy Efficiency Improvement Programme’ that H&M started in 45 of its supplier factories. This demonstrates that the brand lived up to the promises it made in its 2010 CSR report.

H&M now has 10 out of 16 points. Word of advice on how to improve on these last points: we would like to see clear carbon footprint reporting. In its 2011 report, H&M provides a carbon footprint relative to its sales. This does not say anything about a possible decline of the total emissions. In fact, it makes us quietly suspect that the emissions in effect haven’t decreased at all…

Hurrah! Apple has announced that it will be forcing the infamous Foxconn to work with independent auditors from the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to improve conditions in its Chinese mega-factories. But there are two reasons why it’s a little too soon to celebrate. The first one is obvious: the audits have barely begun, so there aren’t yet any actual improvements to celebrate. The second is that poor labor conditions are an industry-wide problem in the electronics sector. So why are we only picking on Apple?

The background

Foxconn manufactures and assembles components and finished products for the consumer electronics industry. On its website, you can find a grainy map that charts how a cluster of Foxconn sites in China feeds parts and products to others downstream in South-East Asia, North and Central America and Europe. This is its famous “vertical(ly) integrated one-stop shopping business model” which enables it to offer manufacturing, moulding, tooling and assembly services, among others, to its customers. Also on its website, you can find a chart showing its meteoric growth from a mere $0.5 billion company in 1997, to a $61.8 billion company in 2008 (the most recent figures given).

Foxconn has been in and out of the news for quite a few years now due to the inhumane labor conditions reported to be routine practice at many of its factories. The allegations range from enforced overtime, to withholding of salaries, unsafe procedures for handling dangerous chemicals and military-style discipline.

Who’s the bad apple? Supplier or brand?

Apple is far from being Foxconn’s only customer – Amazon, Acer, Microsoft, and Sony are also listed among its major clients. To name but a few.

And it’s not just Foxconn’s “Apple” factories that are home to poor labor conditions. For example, Foxconn’s Nokia plant in India has also been named and shamed. So we can probably assume that most of Foxconn’s customers are profiting from dodgy labor practices.On the other hand, Foxconn is, of course, only one of many suppliers to the electronics sector. On January 16 2012, Apple posted a suppliers list for the first time ever. It apparently covers 97% of Apple’s supply chain – and consists of 156 separate suppliers. So a more important question is: is Foxconn the only one of Apple’s suppliers to disregard its workers’ rights?

Systemic failings

In a report published last year, US-based human-rights organization China Labor Watch investigated 10 factories in China (including two belonging to Foxconn) where products for Apple, Dell, IBM, Ericsson, Philips, Microsoft, HP, Nokia, and others are manufactured. It found “significant systemic issues regarding recruitment, wages and benefits, working hours, work intensity, safety and sanitation, leave benefits, food and dormitory conditions, reward and punishment systems, and grievance mechanisms in China‘s electronic manufacturing industry.” That is a damning list of complaints.

Further, China Labor Watch argues that “as these ten factories are suppliers of the electronics industry‘s brand leaders, it is clear that their problems further reflect widespread, systemic issues in the electronics industry as a whole.” In other words, it would be dangerous, and misleading, to single out Foxconn.

But why single out Apple?

When Nike first faced allegations of poor labor conditions in its factories, Nike Director Todd McKean stated that the company’s initial attitude was “Hey, we don’t own the factories. We don’t control what goes on there.’… [But] we had people there every day looking at quality. Clearly, we had leverage and responsibility with certain parts of the business, so why not others?”

And when it comes to leverage, few companies have more than Apple. After announcing its Full Year results for 2011, Apple overtook Exxon Mobile Corp to temporarily become the world’s most valuable company (in terms of share value). Its cash pile stands at a whopping $100 billion. And it sold more than 37 million iPhones in the last quarter of last year. This makes it one of the most significant players in an industry where size brings huge power when it comes to manufacturing standards and processes.

So Apple has the leverage – and it has the resources – to drive change. It’s hard to see who else in the industry is in a better position to spearhead the revolution. And it’s hard to argue against the suggestion that this means they also have the greatest responsibility.

Want to read more about Apple and workers’ rights? Check out Good Electronics and MakeITfair.

Remember Greenpeace’s Detox Campaign – “Adidas and Nike need to detox”? The aim of this campaign is to put a halt on water pollution by fashion brands and their textile factories. Greenpeace is calling on all clothing brands to comply with and live up to the statements described in the Zero Discharge Commitment. To do this, they must publicly acknowledge the severity of the problem, and promise to actively work on an entirely toxic-free future.

Update Rankings
The campaign has been extremely fruitful so far: Puma, Nike, Adidas, Reebok, C&A en G-Star have all committed to zero discharge. A great result for Greenpeace, and the rest of the planet! Subsequently, all of these brands have presented their renewed environmental policy on their websites. Sufficient reason for us to give them all an extra point in their rankings.

Lacoste is the only brand among the lot that has not changed its website yet. We’d like to emphasize that it is not too late to still do so – this good step ahead can lead to their very first point in our ranking!

source: website Greenpeace

With spring coming up and winter sportswear on sale, outdoor brands are doing great business. The products on their websites are surrounded by images of beautiful landscapes. This ‘natural’ branding makes you, as a consumer, trust them easily for producing their products with attention and care for our earth. But is this true?

Source: Patagonia website

Best practices

Setting an example with their environmental policy and therefore on top of our ranking is Vaude, specialized in mountaineering. They score 11 out of 16 points. Inspiring facts:

• According to the ‘Green Shape’ principle, half of their products are produced out of at least 90% organic materials, like recycled PET-bottles or polyester
• Since 2008 the brand is a ‘Bluesign’ partner and 35% of their collections is following the regulations for use of water and chemicals

Furthermore, an honorable mention for Timberland is in place here because of their climate change policy. The brand provides a clear overview of their ecological footprint and has an active policy to become climate neutral in future. Additionally, they take the environment into account during the production of their clothes:

• 34% of cotton is organic
• Natural resources like bamboo and hemp
• Recycling of PET-bottles to produce ‘green rubber’ soles

Unfortunately they did drop a few stitches by not making clear specifically what part of the total consists of environmental friendly materials. Nevertheless, so far they are doing a good job!

Still disappointing
Patagonia is often praised as champion of social corporate responsibility. With an impressive list of initiatives they come across as environmentalists. They work with the four R’s:

• Reduce: only produce sustainable products
• Repair: offer free repairing within 10 days
• Reuse: hand in your redundant clothes
• Recycle: make new sweaters out of worn out ones

Also, they are Bluesign partner and they donate 1% of their profits to the preservation of nature. Plenty of beautiful words and campaigns, but they don’t score very well in our ranking. Where Vaude offers clear numbers, Patagonia doesn’t. They speak about ‘Carbon Footprint Chronicles’ but don’t tell us much about their own. Neither do they present us facts about the actual use of eco-materials. Therefore, zero points for their environmental policy.

What about Nomad? They only collected one point for environmental and climate policy together. While they claim to work following the principle “good gear, less waste” they don’t provide us enough specifics about their policies and targets. A lot of work left to be done, we would say! A positive remark: they set a good example with they policy for conditions in the workplace.

Promising words call for action
The esthetically impressive and green branding from outdoor brands creates the expectation that they take good care of our environment and nature. Unfortunately, not all brands do. Our advice is simple: give information! Tell consumers what products are green and what share of those products are green. It’s not that hard to be transparent about the environment and climate, being a nature lover – or is it?

It may be the depths of winter, and our toes may be turning blue, but February is a pretty good month to pick up some new lingerie. Lingerie brands and online fashion shops are clamouring to sell their valentine collections right now. Are you heading off this week to pick up something cute for your bed-fellow? Or maybe something to surprise them with? Then here’s a guide for grabbing something green and fair as well as sexy.

Video source: www.morethanprettyknickers.com

Skimpy scores for mainstream panties
Lingerie brands don’t score so well on our website – they don’t tell us much about their efforts to make their businesses greener or fairer. Hunkemöller scores a size zero, for example. They actually took the time to ask us if we could take their ranking off our site – we said no! And we even caught After Eden with its pants down – they had posted on their website that they were members of the business initiative for better working conditions called BSCI. After Eden quickly took the information down once we pointed out that they weren’t.

So whose pants CAN we pull on?
Luckily for us (and our partners), Wonderbra and Pants to Poverty set better examples. Pants to Poverty even uses nothing but organic cotton – which also means there aren’t any pesticides rubbing off on your intimate bits. In fact, lingerie producers in general are using more of these “environmentally preferable materials”, including bamboo, hemp, and soya fibers, as well as recycled nylon. What’s more, they’re using few harmful chemicals in their dying processes.

Our top shopping tips

• Peau Ethique and Ciel both pay close attention to the way they impact people and planet. They use environmentally friendly materials, and apply Fairtrade principles when working with the people who grow them.
• The sexy lingerie sets from In Bloom are made from lyocell, among other things, an ecological alternative to polyester.
• When you buy the brightly colored pants from PACT, you’re supporting organic-cotton farmers
• The simple lingerie sold by Uranus Apparel is made using the by-products of soya-processing (e.g., for making tofu or soya-oil).

What are we missing? Let us know if you’ve found a source of underwear that gives you a clear conscience as well as a great cleavage…
And remember:

Brrrr – it just got cold. If you’re not sure how to make it through to the Spring, try Icebreaker. This is a new brand from New Zealand that specialises in thermal underwear made from the wool from merino sheep. Apparently, when it’s warm it keeps you cool, and when it’s cold outside it keeps you toasty. Even better, the wool isn’t scratchy and is smell-resistant. Last but not least, according to Icebreaker, their products are made according to “ethical” principles and processes, for people and planet. Let’s take a closer look…

With every purchase from Icebreaker, there comes a little book. On the first page, you get some rather lovely images of the New Zealand landscape, and some close-ups of those famous merino sheep. Pretty handsome beasts, by all accounts. And it takes you through the basics on merino wool: its renewable (thanks to the sheep) and biodegradable (i.e., compostable). For Icebreaker, this is the formula that makes their hosiery sustainable. But that’s not quite the whole picture. Because processing merino wool requires a whole lot of chemicals. Experts from Made-By have put the fibers in the lowest category for environmental performance.

The Icebreaker website fills plenty of space on how ethical their production processes are. Using a code on your specific product, you can also look up the exact “ethical farm” that your wool came from – and check out a load of great photos.

“It’s about our relationship to nature, and to each other,” they say. Grammatical points aside, there’s just too little in the way of concrete information to support those lovely images. For example, the company doesn’t publish a carbon footprint, there’s no clear policy on the use of chemicals, and no good standards of control on the labor conditions for their factories in Asia. So as far as we’re concerned, this is a whole lot of bleating, for what’s really, just so many thick wooly panties.

Icebreaker has only earned 2 points out of 16 on our rankings.

Let’s hope it can do better in the future. Here is some free advice from Rank a Brand:

• Provide an overview of the whole production chain (not only those photogenic farms)
• Make it clear which labour conditions are acceptable in the factories in asia (publish a Supplier Code of conduct, show how it are enforced, and which factories and other stakeholders are involved). Right now, Icebreaker scores 0 out of 8 in this category.
• Show us what “ethical standards” actually means when it comes to producing wool (0 out of 3 at the moment).
• Reveal which part of the production process complies with which standards for the use of chemicals (now, 0 out of 1 point).
• Publish a carbon footprint for the entire company, and set concrete targets for reducing it (now, 2 out of 4).
• Sign up to a third-party initiaitive, such as Made by or Fair Wear Foundation – so that we can see some independent verification of what’s being reported.

Banana farming tends to be pretty harmful, both environmentally and socially. Which is why we decided to launch a ranking for tropical fruit brands last year. And we were pleased to see that the Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance banana is gaining ground – after all, these labels protects both environmental and labor standards. Nowadays, you don’t even have to trek to the organic market or eco specialist to find them. In the UK, The Coop has been selling Fairtrade bananas for ten years – and Wal-Mart in the States has expanded its Fairtrade banana offering in recent years. In the Netherlands, Coop, Plus and Spar ONLY sell certified bananas.

And what’s the easiest way to spot a Fairtrade banana? Or an organic one? They’re the ones packaged in ‘compostable’ bioplastic. Sure comes in handy when you’re trying to pick out those ‘good’ bananas in a hurry, but is it actually better for the environment?

What do we mean by bioplastic?
Most of the compostable plastic used to wrap up our Fairtrade bananas is made from renewable raw materials, such as the starch from maize (= food). Compared to conventional plastics, bioplastics take about 20% less energy to produce (and release about 20% fewer carbon emissions, too). And in the EU, there’s even a certification system to guarantee that the material will break down naturally within three months: just look for the seedling logo. The advantage is that this plastic will not blow around our streets, get snagged in trees, gather on beaches and feed the plastic soup building up in our oceans.

Pros and Cons
There are several people raising awkward questions about bioplastics – including Greenpeace, which is unhappy at the amount of genetically modified maize being used as a raw material. Plus, allowing the compostable varieties to break down in landfill sites may release CO2 – and other greenhouse gases, like methane (which has a much more powerful greenhouse effect than CO2). If this is indeed the case, incinerating the plastic would actually be better than sending it to landfill, as it produces energy. Yes, it would still release CO2, but that counts for burning petroleum-based plastic as well.

Do we even need it anyway?
But not all bioplastics are compostable. And there are loads of things that are pretty difficult to transport and sell without packaging. So fair enough – wrap it up in bioplastics. It’s got to be better than using up our oil reserves. But bananas? Don’t they kind of have packaging built in? Why then, do so many Fairtrade bananas come in plastic packaging? We asked at a couple of supermarkets why they package their bananas, but they’re keeping us waiting for an answer.

Bioplastics yes, banana packaging no.
At Rank a Brand, when it comes to tropical products, we give points to brands that have set clear targets for reducing the weight of their packaging. Plus, so far, we have also seen an increased use of bioplastics as a responsible move. But is it actually? We’re now thinking about changing our criteria for bananas, based on the assumption that they don’t actually need to be wrapped in plastic – whether or not it is made from plants.

Is this assumption fair? Or is there a good reason to pop each Fairtrade bunch in a plastic bag? If you know the reason, let us know below – or send us a tweet to @rankabrand_org.

For more information about bioplastics in general, check out this excellent blog post from Green Living Online.

Amsterdam Fashion Week takes place from January 25-29, and fashionistas are scrambling for the last tickets to the hottest shows. But there’s one show that’s grabbing attention among ethical-fashion watchers: it’s the Green Fashion Competition, which aims to spot talented entrepreneurs who are trying to build up a fashion house while safeguarding global biodiversity. Eight finalists have already been chosen, and during Amsterdam Fashion Week, they will each get the chance to showcase three outfits on the catwalk.

Since we are focused primarily on researching large consumer brands (this is a tough choice we had to make out of capacity considerations), these responsible brands are not in our database. Yet we want to take this opportunity to put them in the spotlight – ultimately, it is these brands that perform well on sustainability issues. Lucky for you, all you need to do is head to their websites to snap up their wares.

Sustainable brands at Mint Fair, Modefabriek 2012

We’re pretty used to the fashion industry being scrutinised for its labor conditions – but we don’t often think of biodiversity when we’re picking out a new pair of jeans. According to the competition’s organisers, that needs to change. In its own words:

“Mankind’s consumption of raw materials and modern production techniques are having an extremely destructive effect on the world’s biodiversity. Examples of this are the unaccountable amounts of water wasted in many production techniques, the chemicals used in dyes and other treatments that pollute the environment, and the extent to which large scale agriculture (eg cotton fields) destroys habitats.”

How can a fashion house safeguard biodiversity?
The competition focuses on a range of biodiversity-sensitive issues, including the kinds of materials that the clothes are woven from, and the kinds of chemical processes involved. This rather neatly reflects the kinds of questions we use to make our own rankings  (we check brand’s policies and performances against a list of targeted questions – the more right answers, the higher up our rankings a brand can ascend).

An important proportion of the ecology questions in our rankings center on what are known as ‘preferred materials’. For example, regular cotton is out (cotton is the most chemically intensive fiber to produce) – but organic cotton is in. And it’s not all about being natural and organic – we’re also more than happy to see clothes made out of nylon, as long as it has been made from recycled plastic products, such as old water bottles and used tires. Check out the full list of preferred materials in our manual.

Great for the little guys – how are the bigger companies doing?
The competition’s tag-line is “Sewing the seeds for the future of fashion”, and it wants its winners to gain a permanent place within the industry. That’s why the cash prize also comes with coaching and networking opportunities. But it’s going to take some time before these small studios can revolutionize the industry. So shouldn’t the multi-million-dollar fashion houses that dominate the industry already be doing something? Well, some of them are. In our recent fashion report, we revealed an increase in the number of fashion brands with a policy for better chemical processes. The number of brands that use environmentally preferred materials has also clearly increased. But there’s still a long way to go. Only 2% of the fashion brands in our database score 4 out of 4 in this area. And a disappointing 86% of them don’t score any points at all.

For an overview of the Green Fashion Competition’s finalists, see the website.

During the annual Modefabriek this past weekend there was also plenty of attention for sustainable fashion at the Mint Fair. It was a bright spot in a RAI full of (pretty much unsustainable) commerce. Look at the website of the Modefabriek for more information about Min, as well as an overview of the sustainable fashion brands that were found here.

Companies are investing more and more in their CSR effors. That is the headline finding in a recent report by Dutch NGO MVOnederland, which reveals ten positive trends in the evolution of responsible business practices. Interestingly, it also seems that the business case for responsible and sustainable policies is getting stronger and stronger.

Here are three more trends from the report that we can be proud to be part of:

Trend # 1: companies are focusing more on CSR
From the report: “The focus on CSR continues to grow in companies of all sizes. The main reasons are rising customer demand, opportunities for cost-savings, the scarcity of raw materials, and PR concerns”

See! This is more evidence that pressure from consumers is grabbing brands’ attention. In fact, sustainability has been widely hailed as a “global mega-trend” (google “sustainability megatrend” and you get nearly 50,000 hits). With other trends, such as the scarcity of raw materials, adding to its momentum, “sustainability” looks far more likely to stick around – and to change the world!

So keep voting with your wallet, folks!

Trend #5 The Consumers want sustainability, but are getting more picky

From the report: “Customers are now fussy [when it comes to sustainability, and] meeting basic sustainability standards has become a minimum requirement… For sustainable marketing, this means companies need to offer clear and trustworthy information about the sustainability credentials of their products.”

This also implies that we’re getting more knowledgeable about what sustainability means – and better at spotting greenwashing. But let’s not pat ourselves on our back just yet. If companies are going to start presenting more information, we need to make sure we stay informed about sustainability debates to keep our greenwash alarm on a hair trigger.

Trend #7: Transparency: from compliance to innovation

From the report: “In addition to following guidelines, more attention is being paid to the different ways in which transparency can inform CSR issues. From bringing dilemmas into the open, to kick-starting dialogues between stakeholders, transparency is leading to innovation [in CSR].”

Transparency is usually associated with report-writing, and not with the actual ‘responsibility’ element of CSR. It’s an approach that emphasises compliance – to following, but not leading – but there is reason to think that it is changing. The MVO has seen that companies are now providing greater insight into the dilemmas they face and the way they make their choices. Companies are increasingly asking other parties to help make their toughest decisions. And it’s certainly no longer good enough to just brag about setting a few targets (which we certainly agree with).

The MVO report provides an interesting case study: ASN Bank is a Dutch bank that is committed to only investing in socially responsible concerns. In 2011, it published a concept version of its investments policy on various internet forums, and invited average joes to offer their feedback. And during the summer, it requested regular input from a range of stakeholders on various dilemmas it faced in the areas of child labour and arms trading.

As transparency increases, their ranking at Rank a Brand automatically increases: no information = zero points.

Click here if you want to see the full report – and can read Dutch. Sorry!