Bloomberg has published an in-depth interview with François-Henri Pinault, the CEO of French luxury conglomerate Kering (parent company of Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, and Puma), about the successes and struggles of creating Kering’s first-ever public sustainability report.
Working with NGOs and international partners, Kering created an Environmental Profit & Loss (EP&L) methodology that quantifies their companies’ comprehensive carbon footprint. Kering also developed an accompanying app entitled MY EP&L which allows all designers to calculate the impact of any product they create using a criteria of 5,000 factors.
In the interview, Pinault provides insight into industry challenges like increasing transparency in the trade of exotic animal skins and finding customers for the fashion industry’s waste products. Pinault also shares some of his ideas for implementing sustainability measures without hurting the bottom line, and looks to the future with investments in up-and-coming textile technology, like lab-generated leather and chemical fiber separation processes.
You can read the full interview at Bloomberg.
