Sustainable Apparel Coalition

Patagonia participates in the Sustainable Apparel Coalition because we have found that collaborating with others in our industry is the best way to get the best work done. We have been pioneering environmental and social practices for many years in our business and supply chain but we can’t do it alone.

We helped to gather the top leaders in sustainability in the apparel industry, non-governmental organizations, academia and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency together for an inaugural meeting in 2010 to determine the feasibility of such a coalition working together. We are happy to report that it was a successful meeting and today there are 49 members of the coalition.

The vision of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition states: “An apparel industry that produces no unnecessary environmental harm and has a positive impact on the people and communities associated with its activities.”

This is a vision that we are happy to support to move the entire industry forward into the best environmental and social practices in our industry and provide a model for other industries.

Purpose:
The Sustainable Apparel Coalition’s vision and purpose are based on a set of shared beliefs that:

The environmental and social challenges around the global apparel supply system affect the entire industry.
These challenges reflect systemic issues which no individual company can solve on their own.
Pre-competitive collaboration can accelerate improvement in environmental and social performance for the industry as a whole and reduce cost for individual companies.
This collaboration enables individual companies to focus more resources on product and process innovation.
Credible, practical, and universal standards and tools for defining and measuring environmental and social performance support the individual interests of all stakeholders.

Our Purpose: The Sustainable Apparel Coalition was founded by a group of sustainability leaders from global apparel and footwear companies together with leading environmental and social organizations who recognize that addressing our industry’s current social and environmental challenges are both a business imperative and an opportunity. Through multi-stakeholder engagement, the Coalition seeks to lead the industry toward a shared vision of sustainability built upon a common approach for measuring and evaluating apparel and footwear product sustainability performance that will spotlight priorities for action and opportunities for technological innovation.