As a vegetarian, I am a big fan of fashion designer Stella McCartney and her philosophy. Stella McCartney, who turned her name into a British luxury brand, is well known for refusing to use any leather, fur, skins or feathers in her clothes. For Stella making ethically correct fashion is equally important as making aesthetically appealing fashion, which in my opinion is exactly the way it should be.

So recently Stella McCartney gave us another reason to love her, as she launched her first global environmental profit and loss account (E P&L). This account shows monetary worth on the ecological costs and profits generated by the direct activities of the entire supply chain over 2015. To do so the brand conducted environmental checks over the past year, analyzing the impact of her activities on natural capital.

This is something that is very innovative. Environmentalist Annie Leonard mentioned this before in her popular video Story of Stuff. She explained that many companies externalize costs. Meaning that the dress I buy for €4,95, does not cover the costs of the cotton that is produced in China, the labor costs of the girl who made the dress somewhere in Bangladesh, the storage costs of the dress, the shipping costs of the dress and eventually the salary of the staff guy who helped picking out the dress. Meaning, I don't pay for the dress. However, others pay. In China people pay by loss of resources, children in Bangladesh pay with their future as they drop out of school to work, and all around the world people pay by loss of clean air (increasing chances for asthma and cancer), all along the system people suffer from me buying the dress.

Calculating the ecological footprint 

The report looked at all aspects of the supply chain, from the production of the materials till the own activities and sales of the product. They translated this into six important categories of impact on the environment, namely:

Changing the buying process

The report shows that the brand had an environmental ‘loss’ of 5,5 million euros over the past three years, which could be translated in an 7% increase in impact on the environment because of used materials. According to Stella McCartney this is caused by the growth of the brand: Even though the general impact on the environment has increased, by changing the buying process the brand managed to decrease the average ecological footprint the past three years with 35% per kilogram of used material. The report showed that the supply chain was responsible for 90% of the environmental impact of the company. Mainly while producing resources, the environmental impact of Stella McCartney was huge, up to 57 procent. A good example of this is that they changed from using virgin cashmere to using regenerated cashmere, in the promotion video below it is explained why this change was necessary.