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MANUFACTURING & MATERIALS INNOVATION
E
arlier this year, Paris-based
luxury group PPR issued a set of
core sustainability targets for its
luxury and sports-lifestyle
brands to achieve by 2016. Two of these
referred directly to leather. The group,
whose footwear and leathergoods
brands include Bottega Veneta, Gucci,
Balenciaga, Puma, Yves Saint Laurent
and Sergio Rossi, announced the new
guidelines as part of a wider
sustainability programme at its April
2012 annual general meeting.
Specifically, the group said that all
leather from domestic livestock used in
PPR products would be from responsible
and verified sources that do not result in
converting sensitive ecosystems into
grazing or agricultural lands for food
production for livestock. At the same
time, it also declared that all exotic skins
would come from verified captive
breeding operations or from sustainably
managed wild populations.
It went on to state that suppliers of
leather to all PPR brands must employ
accepted animal welfare practices and
humane treatment in sourcing. In order
to achieve this going forward, the group
will make monitoring of its suppliers of
leather and other raw materials a
priority. The various brands within the
group would create their own action
plans and identify priority issues that
affected them so that they would be
able to achieve 2016 group targets.
“The next five years are pivotal and
we now have a clear view of what we
want to achieve and the actionable
targets we need to take to get us there,”
said chief executive, Francois-Henri
Pinault. “We are confident that this type
of innovative, sustainability-driven
approach will ultimately generate new
business revenues from sustainable
products and services and create new
business models for us as a group.”
PUMA’S STANCE
Puma’s executive chairman Jochen
Zeitz has since made it abundantly clear
that life for its suppliers of leather,
natural rubber and cotton will become
tougher from now on as the emphasis
will now be on them rather than the
company’s own activities.
At the United Nations global
environment conference at Rio de
Janeiro in June, he got into conversation
with influential UK newspaper the
Financial Times
and levelled some fierce
criticisms of his company’s raw material
suppliers, with particularly harsh
remarks aimed at tanners supplying his
company’s leather. One wonders what
might have prompted him to do this as,
although in its environmental profit and
loss account Puma said that 57% of all
environmental impacts are associated
with the production of raw materials,
natural rubber and cotton as well as
leather, it continues to regard the latter
as its chosen upper material for
footwear production.
He is reported to have even gone so
far as to say that: “I think eventually
we’ll have to look at alternative
materials, there’s no question about it.
We should eat less meat, all of us, and
we should use less leather, I mean that’s
reality. We all know that cattle and beef
are among the biggest contributors to
carbon emissions.” This is clearly a
personal opinion, but he also pointed
out that Puma now has a meat-free
Monday policy in its staff restaurants.
One also wonders what the chairmen of
the other PPR brands whose products
are highly reliant on the use of leather
thought of all this.
18
WORLD FOOTWEAR | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012
Puma executive chairman Jochen Zeitz
(right) seen here with Ferrari chairman
Luca Cordero di Montezemelo.
CREDIT: PUMA
Sustainability must
be balanced