VF Corporation, the parent company of Timberland, The North Face, Vans, Nautica, and many others, has announced that it will be adopting new sourcing policies to combat deforestation and human rights violations.
The new guidelines will mainly affect the conglomerate’s use of wood pulp, the cultivation of which adversely affects countless indigenous communities, and has also become a major contributor to global warming.
As Nicole Rycroft, the executive director of the environmental non-profit, Canopy, which worked with VF on their new policies, explains, “there’s 120 million trees that disappear into clothing every year…[and] a significant amount of that comes from endangered forest landscape.”
VF aims to remove all conflict-pulp from their supply chain by the end of 2017, and is also looking for new ethical and sustainable ways to harvest the material, which is used in the production of rayon and viscose fabric, as well as packaging.
And though VF is eager to get customers on board, execs say their real priority is to do the right thing and use their massive buying power to send a signal to both the retail industry and international governments that large scale demand for conflict-free goods does exist.
You can read more about it at Reuters.
