Kering to go carbon-neutral across entire group

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This means that in addition to Gucci, Kering's other brands – including Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Brioni, and Alexander McQueen, as well as a handful of other names in fashion, leather goods, jewellery and watchmaking – are all set to become carbon-neutral.

Kering will offset the Group’s annual Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions from 2018 on top of all efforts to first avoid and then reduce them.

“When it comes to climate change, we can no longer wait to take real action. We all need to step up as businesses and account for the GHG emissions that we generate in total. Kering is committing to become completely carbon neutral as a Group across all our operations and supply chains. While we focus on avoiding and reducing our GHG emissions to meet our Science-Based Target, we will offset all our remaining emissions and support the conservation of vital forests and biodiversity around the world,” said François-Henri Pinault, chairman and CEO of Kering.

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Offsetting approach

The new commitment is an extension of Kering's annual offsetting approach that has been established since 2011, and initially incorporated Scopes 1 and 2 of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Since then, the luxury giant has been leveraging its Environmental Profit and Loss (EP&L) accounting to analyse the Group’s GHG emissions up to the base of the supply chain, where raw materials are created.

This data has enabled Kering’s Houses to put in place customised supply chain initiatives and efficiency programmes to effectively avoid and reduce its emissions. Furthermore, Kering set a Science-Based Target (approved by the SBT initiative) to reduce all its GHG emissions related to its own operations and supply chain by 50% by 2025 (from a 2015 baseline).

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The official announcement states that Kering has prioritised the conservation of biodiversity for years and the 2018 offsets will equal nearly 2 million hectares of important forests around the world. "Forests act as a carbon sink and the protection of these forests will support the removal of carbon from the atmosphere and help mitigate climate change," the statement reads.