The Lycra Company released its second annual Planet Agenda Update and its abridged Global Sustainability Scorecard for 2022, outlining the company’s progress toward achieving its 2030 sustainability goals.
Planet Agenda is the fiber technology group’s sustainability framework focused on three pillars—product sustainability, manufacturing excellence and corporate responsibility. They’re organized around five of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), tracking last year’s performance against the company’s 2030 goals.
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“Planet Agenda guides our evolution as we strive to contribute to the sustainability of the apparel and personal care industries by delivering products that add value and conserve resources at all levels of the value chain,” Steve Stewart, chief brand and innovation officer for The Lycra Company, said. “We are proud of the advances we have made in pursuit of our 2030 goals. At the same time, we recognize the challenges in front of our industry are great, and we can only meet them by working together with our customers, suppliers and third-party partners.”
Highlights include introducing Thermolite insulation made from 100 percent textile waste with 85 percent of those fiber sales made from recycled materials. The company also signed an agreement to collaborate with Qore to produce bio-derived Lycra fiber, and achieved a 13 percent reduction in combined Scope 1 and Scope 2 absolute greenhouse gas emissions versus 2021 as well as a 9 percent reduction in overall waste at manufacturing sites versus 2021. On the corporate responsibility front, over 2,300 employees completed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) awareness training.
“We see Planet Agenda as a shared endeavor with our customers and partners, united in the belief that to have a healthy business we must have a healthy planet,” Jean Hegedus, The Lycra Company’s director of sustainable business development, said. “Our heritage of working together with our customers and other third parties, along with the urgent need for collaboration throughout the value chain in order to meet the industry’s goals, inspired the theme of the 2022 Planet Agenda Update: ‘Together, we go further.’”
The Global Sustainability Scorecard revealed that the company isn’t getting closer to its goal of converting more than 30 percent of sales for its Lycra T400 fiber made with post-consumer recycled content by the end of 2024, however. Sales dropped from 14 percent in 2021 to 12 percent in 2022 due to the “discontinuation of some ongoing retail programs,” the company said. That percentage of sales is based on what customers purchased in the reporting year.
“A significant portion of our Lycra T400 EcoMade fiber is used in denim as part of our Lycra dualFX technology. In 2022, we saw a decrease in sales to super stretch denim due to fashion trends and post-pandemic cost reduction initiatives,” Stewart told Sourcing Journal. “As a result, some business decreased or was moved from the sustainable offer to a lower cost product. Our goal to shift our sales to recycled or renewable offerings across all of our platforms remains the same, and we continue to work to close the gap in cost.”
