Our environmental impact is the result of the business choices we make, from the origin of our chosen materials to our shipping and delivery practices. At Nanushka we base our decision-making on scientific data.
The fashion industry has a significant impact on climate change, and as a luxury fashion brand, Nanushka is embarking on a path to decarbonization in line with industry best practices. In order to achieve a more holistic and strategic approach to climate change, we have decided to calculate the environmental impact of our products at an individual level – starting with our CORE range, including our signature OKOBOR™ Hide coat. Understanding the environmental impact at product level enables us to transform insights into tangible actions and also improve our current sourcing decisions with the support of several teams such as Design, Collections, Production and Supply Chain.
In Pre-Fall 2022, we launched OKOBOR™, our new alt-leather fabrication, which is exclusive to Nanushka and free from the use of animal skins and derivatives.
This fabric is made with 56% recycled polyester and 44% polyurethane. Replacing virgin polyester with recycled polyester reduces both the demand put upon natural resources and the impact generated by processing the raw material into fabric. Recycled materials also contribute to a circular economy, through preventing waste from ending up in landfills.
It is important to Nanushka that any fabric innovation and development is supported by scientific assessment, and that is why we decided to partner with Carbonfact, a company dedicated to decarbonizing the fashion industry by assessing the environmental impact of products. Carbonfact assesses the carbon footprint of our core products, identifies hotspots and helps our Design, Production and Supply Chain teams to reduce our products’ CO2 emissions over time.
The assessment we carried out confirmed the positive impact of our material innovation on our environmental footprint.
Switching 1kg of our previous alternative leather to OKOBOR™ can reduce carbon emissions by 20% – saving 2.3kg of CO21.
CarbonFact
Carbonfact's methodology follows the 'Product Environmental Footprint Category rules (PEFCR) - Apparel and Footwear Pilots' (V. 1.3), developed by the European Commission.
To carry out the carbon footprint calculations, we have defined the system boundary based on PEFCR v. 1.3 . We took into account materials used, production location, logistics, product usage, and product disposal at the end-of-life stage. The background data used includes Ecoinvent 3.8, EF 3.0, Kering 2021, Mistra future fashion report and the latest scientific articles.
The data that calculates the production of OKOBOR™ was collected from our supplier and allocation was considered based on the annual production level. For calculating the footprint of our previous Alt-leather we have used industry average. This assessment represents a benchmark, against which we can measure our progress as we continue to innovate more sustainable fabric compositions in the future.