Sustainability at GoLite
Corporate responsibility has been part of GoLite’s ethos since our founding in 1998, and we are committed to building a sustainable business. We are following a multi-year, metrics-based path to sustainability, striving to eliminate or mitigate 100% of our environmental footprint and be a model company in how we treat our people and community. Our long-term objective is to aim past neutrality towards becoming “net positive” to environment and civilization across our entire value chain. We don’t have a “green collection:” we are striving to address all of our products and all of our operations. As we do this, we are maintaining or increasing our stringent end-use and testing requirements so that as we move forward, we are actually improving product quality and technical performance, not sacrificing them.
Sustainability is imbedded in every aspect of how we operate through an integrated set of guidelines, policies, and corporate and individual goals, all bound together by our mission, vision, and values. Our definition of sustainability includes respect for everyone involved in our supply chain from fabric mill employee to you our valued customer or partner; it includes strong financial performance; and minimizing and offsetting the inevitable environmental impacts of producing products.
We are striving to be a real part of the solution to the challenges facing our planet. We are making significant changes in how we do business, because we want to reach a truly sustainable business model as fast as possible while continuing to make premium, high-performance products that serve the needs of outdoor athletes.
Transparency
Below is a brief summary of some of most recent sustainability efforts. To gain a more complete understanding of our sustainability work, we encourage you to review our 2009 Sustainability Report which we issued in January 2010. It is a ground-breaking and comprehensive look at our company’s footprint that fulfills the A+ standards set by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), arguably the world’s most credible and trusted framework for corporate responsibility reporting. The report focuses both on the company’s environmental practices and impact including product responsibility, waste minimization, and climate impact, as well as its social impacts including labor policies, global human rights and community involvement. The full report is available for download here.
Product Impact
After conducting a full assessment of our operations, we know that more than 60% of our overall environmental impact is embedded in the materials in our products. While GoLite products are by nature “greener” (lighter products = less materials = less carbon, less toxics, less waste), we are working hard to reduce the environmental impact of the products we make. Part of this work has included a major shift towards the use of Environmentally Preferred Materials (EPMs) in our products. In the 2010 product line, over 67% of the mass of the materials in our products are made of EPMs. Our goal is 100% EPMs by 2015.
As part of this effort, GoLite has replaced virgin, petro-chemical based materials in all of our main pack fabrics and travel luggage with 50% Tier 1 recycled nylon, and in all of our sleeping bag collections and some apparel with 100% Tier 1 recycled polyester. The impact reduction for recycled textiles varies, but it has shown to have up to 70% (for nylon) and up to 80% (for polyester) reduction in energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions while performing on-par with their conventional alternatives.
The GoLite Index™
The GoLite Index™ is a tool we created to help us drive our products to the most sustainable versions we can make. It is a product-level scorecard that addresses every product’s key social and environmental impacts, helping us make better decisions that drive our products to the most sustainable versions we can produce while helping our customers make better purchasing decisions. We see it as a starting point and our honest effort at product-level transparency. To learn more, we encourage you to review individual product scores on their specific web pages or learn more here.
Responsible Production and Fair Labor
As global brand and corporate citizen, we work in partnership with our factories to ensure that our products produced in workplaces that are fair, safe, and non-discriminatory. We annually audit 100% of our production facilities according to strict social and environmental guidelines. Click here to learn more or check out our 2009 Sustainability Report.
Product Take-Back Program
In early 2010, we launched our “I’m Not Trash” Product Take-Back Program, the first of its kind in the outdoor industry. The program aims to enable consumers to avoid ever sending their used or unwanted GoLite products to a landfill when there are so many positive options for giving their products a second life. By visiting www.golite.com, customers can learn more about how to repair or repurpose their GoLite product locally, but if they decide to send it back to GoLite, the company will repair, donate, repurpose, recycle, and/or store for future recycling everything we get back, lock, stock and zipper pull, regardless of its condition.*
*While GoLite takes back any GoLite product manufactured since its founding, it does not take back GoLite footwear, which is made by a separate company.
Climate Impact
We are dedicated to reducing our climate impact. Although we are growing as a company, our short-term goal is to reduce our actual greenhouse gas emissions by 30% from 2008 to 2010through targeted reduction strategies such as reducing the footprint of the materials in our products, minimizing long-haul flights, and selecting the most efficient shipping methods available. Today, 100% of our energy, business travel, and transportation of finished goods from factory through consumer are offset with NativeEnergy credits that invest in new renewable energy infrastructure in the USA, Canada and China. GoLite has been “carbon neutral” including offsets to these impacts since 2007, and in 2010 we will also offset our share of all of our partner factory and mill operations, resulting in true 100% carbon neutrality for all GoLite operations and products.
Corporate Practices
Our corporate practices are aligned with our values of Innovate, Sustain, and Inspire. Some examples of this alignment are:
• We are the first to market with a comprehensive shift from virgin nylon and polyester in our Spring 2010 backpack and sleeping bag ranges to Tier 1 recycled nylon and polyester
• Where we cannot currently achieve the desired performance with recycled materials, we invest in developing lighter, stronger materials that consume fewer resources to deliver the same performance (our tent fabrics are dramatically lighter than the competition and are actually stronger than most)
• We have developed and are piloting a revolutionary electronic wholesale selling program that replaces paper sales documents with interactive electronic tools, reducing not only paper usage, but also the time it takes to present and take sales orders and process reorders
• We are committed to establishing a “Zero Waste” headquarters (over 93% of our waste is currently recycled or composted through Eco-Cycle)
• We donate hundreds of volunteer service hours in our community every year (while employees are on the clock)
• We have established long-term support of a range of environmental and educational non-profits
• We have staff benefits that reward community service
• We grant full-time employees with one year of service a paid week per year to volunteer for an environmental non-profit
• We pay our employees to use alternative transportation methods
• We support the Conservation Alliance, the American Hiking Society, and many other conservation and outdoor recreation-oriented non-profits
Want to know more? Check out our 2009 Sustainability report.