Q2 2021 Sustainability Report

The Sustainability Report: Q2 2021

The Sustainability Report

Q2 2021

Big companies report their profits in quarterly earnings reports, but we all should be accountable for more than that. That’s why sustainability is at the core of everything we do. We believe in focusing our efforts where we can make the biggest impact for our business and the planet.

Our work centers on four main areas of sustainability:

People
Social responsibility
Diversity, equity, and inclusion
Community engagement & impact

Planet
Climate action 
Resource efficiency
Low impact garment care

Product
Better materials
Clean chemistry
Traceability

Progress
Circularity
Sustainability reporting & transparency
Packaging innovations

Here’s a look at our progress since our last update:

People

There are a lot of awesome people behind our clothes, and we’re responsible for ensuring safe, healthy, and equitable working conditions for all of them. We’re committed to being people-focused and will continue to grow and evolve our work in this area of sustainability. Because who makes your stuff, and how they’re treated, matters a lot.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion

We’re committed to making Ref both a great place to work and a brand that reflects and respects the diversity of our world.
We keep a detailed DEI scorecard for ourselves—our main goals are to improve representation at all levels and our team’s sense of belonging each year. In our 2020 annual report, we showed you where we started this year and our full roadmap for 2021. We’ll keep sharing how we’re doing here each quarter and give a full report on progress to our goals annually.

Culture & executive DEI committees

Our employee-led Culture Committees are focused on the following for 2021:

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Employee Happiness, Mental Health, and Wellness
Community Outreach & Engagement

This past quarter, the committees focused on practical stuff, like giving all Refs access to Calm meditation services and preparing to launch a culture survey tool with Culture Amp to better understand and manage employee experience. Our Executive Diversity Council continued to prioritize DEI at Ref, and our Culture Committee realigned to focus on their primary initiatives plus outreach to better connect the Ref community.

Representation audits & partnerships

Representation matters, internally and externally. We want everyone who loves Ref to see themselves in our stuff. So we’re asking all agencies to support our voluntary demographic survey for Ref models to measure how we’re doing in terms of diversity across size, ethnicity, and skin tone.
We’ve grown our recruiting team to expand our focus on sourcing diverse talent across the industry. We’re also reaching out to learn and build relationships that will support our diversity efforts. Here’s what we’ve done so far:
• Sponsored scholarships with Creatives Want Change (CWC), dedicated to cultivating Black creative talent beginning at the high school level and continuing into early professional development.
• Joined Black In Fashion Council (BIFC) and participated in an accountability survey in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.

Learning together

This quarter, all Ref managers completed interactive DEI training plus additional management training to reinforce being better leaders. Our Brand + Digital Marketing, Ecommerce, and Creative teams attended antiracism workshops hosted by 2BG Consulting to continue the work of creating representative marketing. We’re excited to roll out more learning and growth opportunities across our teams.

Our partners

Throughout our supply chain, we work with incredible partners who share our values of accountability, transparency, and sustainability and who make a real impact in the industry. We know we’re not perfect, but we’ll always do our best to be transparent and keep pushing for better. We require all our direct cut, sew & finish manufacturing partners to adhere to our Code of Conduct (basically our requirements for ethical operations) to ensure fair labor conditions and fundamental labor rights. These include adhering to health and safety protections, prohibiting child labor & forced labor, and meeting or exceeding legal minimum requirements in the locales where they work. Our Code of Conduct references the FLA Workplace Code of Conduct, which is based on International Labor Organization (ILO) standards and internationally accepted good labor practices.

Our suppliers participate in independent, third-party social assessments to ensure fair, safe, and healthy working conditions and continuous improvement. These assessments are conducted not only to ensure they’re meeting our Code of Conduct but to identify areas of progress and to stimulate improvement. All substandard audit findings must be remediated in a timely manner.

→ The process

Partner ratings

We use a color coded rating system for our supplier audits and continuous improvement efforts. Our goal is to maintain a "Green" rating for 75% or more of Tier 1 facilities (so our finished goods assemblers and contractors) by 2022. While some of our suppliers are in the orange tier, we focus on solutions, as our goal is always to maintain relationships with our partners and influence better practices.

GREEN
59%
Authorized for production

Facility meets our standards

Next audit:
Domestic:
3-6 months
International:
12 months

YELLOW
33%
Authorized for production

Facility has some minor/moderate issues. Corrective Action Plan required.

Next audit:
Domestic:
2-6 months
International:
9-12 months

ORANGE
8%
Authorized for production on a probationary basis

Facility has safety, health or labor-related violations of our standards. Corrective Actions and Prevent Actions required. Onsite support visit or follow up assessment required as needed.

Next audit:
Domestic:
2-3 months
International:
3-6 months

RED
0%
Not authorized for production

Facility has one or more Zero-Tolerance Violations and/or has failed to remediate major safety, health or labor-related violations. Corrective Actions and Preventive Actions required. Onsite support visit or follow up assessment required.

Next audit:
Domestic:
1 month
International:
1-3 months

GREEN	YELLOW	ORANGE	RED
55%	39%	4%	2%
Authorized for production	Authorized for production	Authorized for production on a probationary basis	Not authorized for production
Facility meets our standards	Facility has some minor/moderate issues. Corrective Action Plan required.	Facility has safety, health or labor-related violations of our standards. Corrective Actions and Prevent Actions required. Onsite support visit or follow up assessment required as needed.	Facility has one or more Zero-Tolerance Violations and/or has failed to remediate major safety, health or labor-related violations. Corrective Actions and Preventive Actions required. Onsite support visit or follow up assessment required.
Next audit: 12 month	Next audit: 9-12 months	Next audit: 3-6 months	Next audit: 1-3 months

Currently, six of our suppliers have attained a social compliance certification like Fair Trade, SA8000, or WRAP.

While certifications are not everything, we’re working closely with our suppliers to increase their participation in more social certification programs to ensure equitable working conditions for employees throughout our supply chain.

Toward 100% living wage

U.S. living wage increased by approximately 20% in 2021, moving Reformation team members from 100% to 53% compliant with the current living wage standard.

We use the MIT Living Wage Calculator to set our living wage standards. The 2021 update of the tool changed methodologies and data sources, significantly increasing living wage compared to prior years and beyond our planned budget. We remain committed to living wage principles and believe all workers should be able to meet their basic needs and maintain self-sufficiency. So we will continue to pursue a living wage for all of our teams. Given the size of the increase this year and the challenges our business faced in 2020, we are not able to support the full increase in a single year. But we processed increases in Q1 and plan to continue to make progress each year in the pursuit of Living Wage.

People SDG
5: Gender Equality, 8: Decent Work & Economic Growth, 10: Reduced Inequalities
12: Responsible Consumption & Production, 17: Partnerships for the goals

Product

Your clothes go through a lot before they make it to you. We do the heavy lifting behind the scenes and focus on things like traceability, fiber standards, and clean chemistry to ensure we lessen the environmental and social impacts of our stuff.

Shoes 2.0

After launching our first-ever shoe collection in 2019, we realized making them sustainably was even tougher than we thought, so we decided to pause to ensure we could get it right. We aimed to improve our production at every level of the process. We started by partnering with Leather Working Group Gold and Silver rated tanneries to process our leather responsibly, reduced virgin plastics by 75%, cut down on packaging, and used recycled materials wherever possible. We looked for solutions, and where there were none, got to work creating our own. All while keeping it cute.

On average, Ref Shoes 2.0 emit 37% less carbon dioxide, use 58% less water, and result in 100% less waste than average footwear bought in the U.S.

They’re a great example of how we think about the whole lifecycle of our stuff–starting at the beginning by knowing 100% of our farms and going all the way to the end of a product’s life by making 100% of our shoes recyclable. Beyond the shoes themselves, we want to make a real impact in the footwear industry. So we’re teaming up with the Materials Innovation Initiative to create plastic-free leather alternatives and working on closed-loop production practices where new products are made directly from our waste.

Traceability

Traceability is about knowing exactly where our stuff comes from. We want to be able to answer “who made our clothes” at every level of the supply chain.

Our goal for 2021 is to reach 100% traceability¹ into our Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 suppliers. Supply chains are fragmented and complex, so we’re focusing on digging into Tier 4 and going deeper at the fiber, forest, and farm level so we can take accountability for responsible practices all the way through our supply chain.

Traceability performance

TIER 1
100% Finished goods assemblers & subcontractors
TIER 2
100% Dyers & printers; finishers, weavers, knitters
TIER 3
94% Fibers, spinners, recycled material collector/processor
TIER 4
2% Raw material (Farm, Forest, Ranch)

Here’s where we made our stuff so far this year:

44.9% China
39.1% Los Angeles
9.7% Turkey
3.4% Brazil
2.8% Vietnam
0.1% India
*Based on % volume

We’re committed to making clothes with a smaller environmental impact in places that treat workers well. We provide resources and support to help our partner factories align with our goals, achieve our standards, and move beyond compliance.
→ Learn more about our factories

Here’s where we made our stuff so far this year:

44.9% China
39.1% Los Angeles
9.7% Turkey
3.4% Brazil
2.8% Vietman
0.1% India
→ Learn more about our factories

Fiber standards

Up to 2/3 of our sustainability impact happens at the raw materials stage—before the clothes have actually been made.

The materials we use are a major driver of the total impact of our products. We have our own Ref fiber standards that are as holistic as possible, taking into consideration water input, energy input, land use, eco-toxicity, greenhouse gas emissions, human toxicity, availability, and price. We also looked at garment care implications, like microfiber shedding. Our goal is to have 100% of fabric for apparel meet A/B for our fiber standards by 2023.

97% of our fabrics meet our A/B ratings²

▪ A - ALL STARS 28%

Key fabrics: Tencel™ Lyocell, Recycled cotton, Regenerative cotton, Deadstock

▪ B - BETTER THAN MOST 69%

Key fabrics: Linen, Organically grown cotton,  Better Viscose, Modal

▪ C - COULD BE BETTER 1%

Key fabrics: Econyl® Regenerated nylon, REPREVE™ polyester

▪ D - DON’T USE UNLESS CERTIFED 1%

Key fabrics: Silk, LWG Certified Leather

▪ E - EWW, DON’T USE <1%

Key fibers in blends: Lycra, Spandex,  Cashmere, Polyester

→ Learn more about Ref fiber standards

→ Learn more about Ref fiber standards

Clean chemistry

We work closely with our partner printers, dye houses, and tanneries to ensure the responsible use of chemicals, water, and energy. That way, we know our products are safe for everyone and everything they touch. Our goal is to have 75% of our dyers and printers clean chemistry certified by the end of this year.

63% of our dyers and printers have a clean chemical certification for our materials

Product SDG
6: Clean Water & Sanitation, 12: Responsible Consumption & Production
14: Life Below Water, 15: Life on Land

¹Traceability is calculated by total fabric yardage for apparel and by upper fabric volume for shoes YTD 2021. This excludes all deadstock materials.
²Fiber performance is calculated by total fiber volume usage YTD 2021. Leather and deadstock are measured by total material volume usage.
³Percent of clean chemical certifications for dyers, tanneries, and printers is calculated by total fabric yardage for apparel and upper fabric volume for shoes YTD 2021. This excludes all deadstock materials.

Planet

Making clothes has a big impact on people and the planet. We keep our true costs in mind when making any decision by tracking our company-wide environmental footprint.

Climate positive roadmap

Our stuff has been carbon, water, and waste neutral since 2015, but it's no longer enough just to be neutral. That’s why we made a commitment to be climate positive by 2025. We’ve been working with consultants at South Pole to better understand what we need to do between now and then to achieve this goal.
We’re sharing our roadmap because we want to provide resources to any business interested in taking immediate climate action. We don’t have all the answers, but we’re sharing what we’ve learned so far, and will continue to do so as we make progress. Shoot us a note at sustainability@thereformation.us if we can help you or you can help us save our planet.

Here’s where we’ll focus to really make a difference:
Better materials
Circularity
Transportation
Energy management

Here’s where we’ll focus to really make a difference:

Better Materials
Circularity
Transportation
Energy Management

Sexy math

Our internal lifecycle tool, RefScale, calculates our environmental footprint by adding the pounds of carbon dioxide emitted, gallons of water used, and pounds of waste generated by our business. Then we determine how much Reformation saves compared to conventional clothes bought in the U.S. The whole equation follows the lifecycle of clothes—everything from growing textile fibers and making fabric, dyeing, transporting materials, manufacturing, packaging, shipping, garment care, and even recycling clothes when you’re done with them. We offset 100% of our product footprint but always push for better materials, factories, and operations to keep it as low as possible.

Carbon intensity of our products

2021 YTD total footprint

Carbon dioxide (Metric tons)
Ref footprint: 9,811
Conventional footprint: 17,006
Savings: 7,195

Water (M gallons)
Ref footprint: 1,119
Conventional footprint: 2,371
Savings: 1,252

Waste (metric tons)
Ref footprint: 858
Conventional footprint: 896
Savings: 38

That’s like removing 1,565 cars off the road, reusing 1.89 olympic sized pools of water, and preventing 2.08 garbage trucks of waste¹.

We also invest in carbon offsets and water restoration credits to go beyond lowering our footprint. In 2021, we partnered with Native Energy on CO2 reduction projects like supporting clean cookstoves in China, a clean energy project in India, and a reforestation project in Tanzania. Through our partnership with Bonneville Environmental Foundation(BEF), we’ve helped restore over 465 million gallons of water since 2015 by supporting projects across California and the Colorado River Basin. Our current project is a system conservation project with the Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT).

Low impact garment care

We consider the full lifecycle of our stuff, so 62% of our garments are now designed for low impact garment care².

Low impact garment care means keeping your stuff clean is easier on you and the environment. So instead of dry cleaning or separating out all your bright red clothing, you can wash our stuff by hand or toss it in the machine on cold. Just changing the temperature of your wash can save as much as 500 pounds of carbon dioxide per year³. Low impact garment care methods also make our stuff easier and cheaper for you (bye, dry cleaners). We’ve been making easy-care stuff like sweatpants for the past year, so the transition to low impact has been simpler. As we shift our product offering back to our usual stuff, like dresses, we may have more work to do, so our goal is to maintain 60% of our products for low impact garment care by 2022.

Planet SDG
6: Clean Water & Sanitation, 7: Affordable & Clean Energy
12: Responsible Consumption & Production, 13: Climate Action

¹CO2 equivalency comes from the EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator, Water from the Patagonia Alliance and Waste from Frog Hauling.
²Includes garments that are machine washed cold or hand washed.
³World Wildlife Fund, Green Tips.

Progress

We have a lot of work to do to create a fashion system that is circular and makes a positive impact. In order to push sustainability forward, we challenge our efforts and don’t shy away from hard problems. We’re committed to investing in the future, and we’ll always be transparent about our progress.

Reformation + Olive

It takes a lot of fuel and emissions to deliver our products to customers. That’s why we’re excited to offer solutions like Olive. They consolidate your orders across Ref and multiple other retail sites and deliver your purchases in a fully reusable container. So no more cardboard boxes to break down or trips to the post office. Sign up for Olive to reduce waste and the number of times a delivery truck comes to your door.

→ Learn more about our packaging commitments

Never not circulating

While being naked is the #1 most sustainable option, we get that people are going to keep buying clothes. The good thing is, there are actually enough clothing and textiles in existence today to meet our global annual demand. Our goal is to reuse or recycle 500,000 garments in 2021.

134,649 garments reused or recycled this year*
*This includes Ref Vintage, Rent the-Runway, thredUP, and donations.

This number isn’t as high as we’d like it to be. We’re currently developing a take-back program that we hope to launch by the end of the year to help get us closer to this goal. You can help too by sending the stuff you aren’t wearing to thredUP to resell or recycle. For a limited time, you’ll get an additional 15% in Ref credit for everything you sell (yes, it’s a bribe).

Instead of shipping excess inventory to our warehouse in Los Angeles after sample sales, we donated to two local nonprofits. It helps reduce our carbon footprint and supports communities in need. So far in 2021, we've donated 8,743 garments to Lotus House Women’s Shelter in Miami and Princess Chambers in NYC.

United Nations Sustainable
Development Goals

The fashion industry has a major impact on the global economy and the environment. That’s why we aligned our sustainability framework with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to make sure we’re tackling the most important issues like climate change and economic inequality.

→ Learn more

Progress SDG
12: Responsible Consumption & Production, 15: Life on Land

Next up

Investing in the future means aiming high and ensuring our efforts are focused in the places that matter today, and tomorrow. Here’s some future-focused stuff we’re working on:

Thanks, it’s vintage

Becoming a more circular business is one of our big picture goals, and selling vintage clothing in our LA and LES stores helps us get there. But the sustainability of resale shouldn’t just be for people who live in big cities. So, starting this summer, we’re bringing more vintage pieces to our site more often, so everyone can get in on the circularity.

Trash to treasure

We got our start repurposing vintage garments, so you know we know how to upcycle. We’re currently working on a closed-loop take-back program to ensure we’re responsible for the full life of our clothes.

Pass it on

Most of the energy, water, and chemicals used to make our stuff happens in our supply chain. So we’re getting serious about tracking resource use at every level and working closely with our partners to connect them to new technologies and practices.

Okay, that’s all for now.
→ Our Q1 2021 Report