Continental Clothing Wins Prestigous Ethical Award

[Mariusz Stochaj]

Continental Clothing Company won the Responsible Business 2010 Award for Outstanding Performance at the inaugural Ethical Corporation Awards in London.

The awards are global in scope, with entries received from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Luxembourg, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the UK, the Ukraine and the USA.

The Outstanding Performance Award recognises Continental Clothing as "the company that made the most impressive verified corporate responsibility achievement over the year on a specific issue". The other nominees in this category were Xstrata, Marshalls, Procter & Gamble and Globo.

The judges “were impressed by the sheer scale of the company’s sustainability ambition, and by the fact that it achieved a huge amount in a short time. Continental have shown real leadership in their sector, and found solutions where other people have just talked about problems. The judges were particularly impressed by the fact that this company is taking the lead as a B2B company.”

“We are thrilled to receive this award. This is really astonishing and totally unexpected. Most of the shortlisted companies are corporate giants, so this really feels like David and Goliath. I am particularly delighted with the judges’ decision to consider ethical trade values to be more than labour issues alone. The workers’ rights and welfare are of critical importance, particularly in the textile industry, but environmental damage and climate change cause equal amounts of human misery. Sustainability is the buzz word – and rightly so.” – said Mariusz Stochaj, head of products at Continental Clothing Co.

Continental Clothing’s EarthPositive® Apparel brand was conceived in 2007 with the objective of producing attractive and commercially competitive cotton casual wear that would maximise positive and minimise negative environmental, social and economic impacts along the supply and value chain.
The product range was first launched in January 2008. It has now achieved sales in excess of 1 million units of clothing, and it is the fastest growing range within the Company’s product offer.

The EarthPositive® supply chain was developed to provide the apparel industry with a blueprint for ethical and sustainable manufacturing - organic and ethical, but crucially, manufactured solely using sustainable energy generated from wind power. EarthPositive® is a practical and immediate demonstration of how business and the apparel industry can take steps to reduce their social, economic and environmental impacts along the entire supply chain, to reduce green house gases emissions, and to combat climate change.

Every stage of the production process was examined, and best practices applied, reducing the social and environmental damage normally associated with cotton farming and textile production.
Given the considerable effort put in to make EarthPositive® sustainable, Continental wanted to accurately assess the impact these measures had on its product carbon emissions. Having completed the study, Continental determined that the measures taken had reduced the carbon footprint of EarthPositive® Apparel by 90%, while producing all garments in a sustainable and ethical manner.

As a result of the Company’s commitment to reduce its impact on the environment, and specifically with regard to the climate, Continental Clothing was accepted as the first business-to-business (B2B) pilot partner, and the only textile company, in The Carbon Trust’s product carbon footprinting and labelling programme. Other pilot partners were Tesco, Boots, Pepsico, Innocent and HBOS.
The Carbon Trust’s Carbon Reduction Label provides an exact carbon measure per product, and requires a commitment to manage and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions over a set two-year period.

Continental Clothing’s work has brought new insights into the environmental hotspots of clothing across the supply and value chain, in a context of a holistic approach to a sustainable clothing manufacturing and consumption model.