Soorty‘s sustainability philosophy is to do no harm through integrated action across energy, water, materials and more—a concept the Pakistan-based denim mill refers to as Denimkind.
At the heart of this thoughtful approach are people. As the company’s general manager of marketing, communications and branding Eda Dikmen noted, even environmental choices have social impact, affecting the livelihoods and well-being of those in Soorty’s value chain and beyond. “Every step we take has a human dimension,” she explained.
Related Stories
Here, Dikmen shares what is needed to scale circularity, Soorty’s progress toward net-zero and how the manufacturer supports thousands of domestic farmers.
SOURCING JOURNAL: Where is Soorty on its journey toward net-zero emissions by 2050?
Eda Dikmen: In April 2024, we became the first Pakistan-based textile company with Science Based Targets initiative-validated near-term and net-zero targets. It’s a governed, science-based mandate with clear numbers: a validated commitment to reduce Scope 1, 2 and relevant 3 emissions by 54.60 percent by 2033 from a 2021 baseline, and by 90 percent by 2050. Between 2021 and 2025, we’ve already recorded a 27 percent reduction.
A significant part of that is energy. We’ve built a clean ecosystem integrating wind, solar and biomass across our facilities while eliminating coal from fabric and garment production. Solar installations sit at 11.7 megawatts (MW), removing over 7,200 tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) annually—expanding to 15 MW by 2027. Biomass alone reduces GHG by 44,600 tons per year. Our NASDA 50 MW wind project has cumulatively avoided approximately 1 million tons of CO2 equivalent, and our on-site Nooriabad windmills avoid a further 10,000 tons annually. Over the next year, the focus moves into harder work: deeper Scope 3 engagement, supplier-level data, organic and recycled material uptake and continued production efficiency gains.
Your Second Life platform recycles denim into new feedstocks. How has this part of your business grown?
E.D.: Second Life is far past the pilot phase. Recycled content is now a standard pillar of our collections, spanning traceable feedstock sourcing, renewable energy-powered processing and spinning capability built specifically for the technical demands of good quality denim.
Our facility can process 54 million garments per year. We diverted 6.3 million kilograms of post-consumer and 950,926 kilograms of post-industrial waste from landfills in 2024. Along with our own operational waste, we now source denim waste from other manufacturers, meaning Second Life is increasingly functioning as a wider feedstock solution for the industry.
Circularity is often framed as a policy ambition in end markets, but Second Life demonstrates that progress depends on infrastructure. Pakistan’s proximity between waste sorting, fiber recovery, spinning and fabric production makes it possible to do this at meaningful scale.
Soorty recently grew its partnership with Haelixa. Why is traceability so important for your operations?
E.D.: Without traceability, each of our sustainability investments becomes a claim. We prefer to be open, data-driven, honest and verifiable.
Haelixa offers something valuable: a physical marker that can be embedded directly to the product, which we add during the fiber stage. The invisible, non-toxic tracers are applied to post-consumer textile waste before mechanical shredding, and they survive spinning, dyeing and garment manufacturing, enabling verification and authentication of a product’s DNA from spinning mill to retail shelf. Our brand partners have the option to use a label on garments, backed by a scannable QR code that links to verified data on fiber origin and processing stages. It makes the “farm to fashion” idea verifiable.
Soorty is also supporting farmers upstream. What impact have your grower-focused initiatives had so far?
E.D.: The Soorty Organic Cotton Initiative (SOCI) and Soorty Regenagri Initiative (SRI) programs were designed to change farming conditions in some of Pakistan’s most underserved agricultural communities in Balochistan and Bahawalpur respectively. The goal is to build a more capable, resilient farming system with lower input dependency and better farm-level decision-making.
SOCI’s participating farmers have seen water use fall 18 to 28 percent, production costs reduce meaningfully and profit margins increase 33 to 50 percent. We give farmers reliable access to high-quality, non-GMO seed—a critical breakthrough in a region where access has historically been the barrier to organic transition. SRI covers soil restoration, composting, low tillage, intercropping, biodiversity and water management across 2,700 hectares, with 1,300 metric tons of certified lint produced. Across both programs and our broader sustainable agriculture work, we support approximately 4,000 farmers.
This work is critical. Climate volatility is hitting Pakistan’s agricultural communities hard and fast, while expectations around farm-level due diligence escalate. We hope our industry is willing to invest upstream—in soil, seeds and farmers—instead of treating raw material as a commodity.
To learn more, visit soorty.com.
