Fashion, broadly defined, is responsible for 20% of water pollution and 10% of global carbon emissions. To respond to this observation, the American NGO Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), designed the “Clean by Design” project proposing a clear and simple methodology to improve the efficiency of textile factories and save energy, water and chemical inputs.

The Kering Group joined the project in 2015. 25 of its Italian suppliers (spinning, dyeing, etc.) therefore benefit from an energy and water efficiency audit, which cost is assumed by Kering, then a custom action is defined for each manufacture.

At first reluctant to open their factories to outside auditors, suppliers quickly saw the interest in joining the program.

Clean by Design has a very persuasive argument: a positive return on investment is recorded on average in two and a half years for measures that are otherwise easy to put in place. Optimizing lighting or ventilation, ensuring more efficient maintenance or even more finely-tuned management of electricity consumption are among the 150 improvement actions identified under the program.

These actions mainly relate to:

– Improving water / energy management and monitoring

– Optimization of steam, water and compressed air distribution systems

– Work on lighting (LED, etc.), air conditioning, electric motors

– Thermal energy recovery

– Green energy production on site

The actions were followed in detail by Kering and the local technical partner to verify the implementation and the actual gains against the design gains.

Participation in the Clean by Design program is offered to strategic suppliers of the Maisons de Kering, and influences their “seller rating”.