Environmental Compliance
Our sustainability efforts are based on two pillars: social and environmental compliance. We follow up on these two topics in two areas: in our company locations and with our productions partners around the world. Both areas are important, both have their own unique challenges.
We try to develop our sustainability policies in a cooperative approach. We want to encourage our employees to get involved through an open and inclusive suggestion system. We feel that this enables a much deeper responsibility for our daily operations and each individual decision. We believe that a lot of small changes can lead to big transformations. You can find out about what we do in detail – from paperless offices to electric cars - in our sustainability reports.
Our second focus area is of course our supply chain. The main part of our emissions and environmental impact is created at our production partner sites and their material suppliers. They don’t legally belong to our company. But how can we ignore the impact our company generates with every single order placement? We are facing this responsibility and work with our partners to develop improvement processes for their facilities. This doesn’t mean that our production process is already perfectly sustainable: we still have a long way to go! But we are committed to reach our sustainability goal and joined forces with several other committed businesses and initiatives to solve the big challenges our industry is facing.
Find out more about our supply chainIn September 2019, ISA-Traesko was the first importer to join the ZDHC Foundation (Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemicals) as Friend of ZDHC. The ZDHC Roadmap to Zero Programme is a coalition of fashion brands, value chain affiliates and associates. Together they empower the global textile, leather, apparel, and footwear value chain to substitute hazardous chemicals for safer ones in the production process.
www.roadmaptozero.com
Since November 2020, ISA-TRAESKO is sucessfully audited to the GRS and has since then started to develop products with certified recycled materials such as recycled polyester for upper materials or recycled EVA or TPR for outsoles. By using recycled materials we are able to minimize the use of finite ressources - and their respective environmental impact. The Global Recycled Standard is an international, voluntary standard that sets requirements for third-party certification of recycled input and chain of custody. The goal of the standard is to increase the use of recycled materials. The standard includes additional criteria for social and environmental processing requirements and chemical restrictions.
www.textileechange/GRS.comISA-TRAESKO partnered up with the Cotton made in Africa initiative in January 2021 to supply sustainable cotton products. Cotton made in Africa, an initiative of the Aid by Trade Foundation, is one of the world’s leading standards for sustainably produced cotton. Their goal is to help people help themselves, via trade rather than donations, in order to improve the living and working conditions of smallholder farmers in Africa and to protect our environment.
www.cottonmadeinafrica.orgSince 2017, ISA-TRAESKO is audited and certified according to the high standards of the Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®). FSC® works to take care of our forests and those who rely on them: by protecting plant and animal species, Indigenous Peoples rights, forest workers’ safety, and much more. Our Chain of Custody certification proves that we are sourcing materials from FSC®-certified forests, and following FSC®-defined best practice throughout the production process and supply chain.
www.fsc-deutschland.de
ISA-TRAESKO’s German headquarter is using 100% green energy and is operating climate-neutral since 2017. After reducing our CO2 emissions as far as possible in 2016, we started to offset all remaining emissions, including all business travels, with Atmosfair. Atmosfair is a German climate protection organisation which is regularly ranked as top offsetting provider. They actively protect the climate, reduce CO2 emissions and support sustainable development by transferring technology and combating poverty. With ISA-TRAESKO’s contribution, Atmosfair is financing green energy projects in India.
www.atmosfair.de
In summer 2019 ISA-TRAESKO committed to a joined licensing agreement with the animal welfare charity PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). We hope to raise public awareness for vegan shoes through the use of PETA-Approved-Vegan labels and are grateful to have such a strong ethical partner at our side.
www.peta.de
Leather Working Group (LWG) is a not-for-profit community organization dedicated to driving excellence in sustainable leather production. ISA-TRAESKO joined LWG as a member in 2016 and is using the LWG Leather Manufacturer Audit for 100% of our nominated tanneries to assess the performance of leather manufacturing facilities (or "tanneries") against environmental, social and governance metrics.
www.leatherworkinggroup.com
