A British outdoor apparel and gear firm is sharing its solution for communicating its corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitments and achievements with the industry at large.
Equip Outdoor Technologies, which owns men’s and women’s outdoor apparel lab Rab and backpacking brand Lowe Alpine, is asking the sector to adopt its Material Facts platform, which launched officially last year.
The company’s aim was to create an accurate and accessible labeling convention for consumer products as an answer to retail’s growing calls for transparency. Similar to the Nutrition Facts label found on food products, the Material Facts label lists features like a product’s recycled content volume and highlights the presence of PFCs, or PFAS, and other chemicals in inputs and components. Country of origin is also listed.
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Equip’s Material Facts tables will begin to roll out publicly this summer, CEO Matt Gowar said. “Brands are competing to find unique and compelling ways of communicating the term ‘sustainability,’” he said. “This doesn’t work, confuses the consumer, can be misleading or risks greenwashing.”
The company has developed more than 500 tables for Rab’s fall 2023 sleeping bag ranges, which will mark the first phase of company-wide adoption. According to Equip, all Rab and Lowe Alpine packs, equipment and accessories will soon be labeled with Material Facts tables. Now, the company is calling other brands to join the platform to institute industry-wide standards for communicating sustainability credentials to shoppers.
Gowar said that the company developed the Material Facts platform to simply convey sustainability data through a non-branded framework that could be used by anyone. “We are happy to share our work and methodology so that we can as an industry work together to an agreed standard,” he added. “This allows us all to concentrate on improvements in our own operations that will have a greater overall impact, rather than figure out how to state where we are today.”
Brands and industry stakeholders like the European Outdoor Group, a trade association representing the outdoor industry in Europe, have voiced support for the development of the platform as Equip works to drum up engagement. Gowar said Equip looks forward to working with “all industry partners to show them how they can quickly and easily convey the information that consumers want, and shortly we will be legally required to report on.”
