Where did our ambition to make carbon neutral workwear disappear?
You may have read on our website about our ambition to produce carbon neutral workwear. We actually took this statement out from our communications in the spring of 2024. Climate change tackling is an ongoing process. At Touchpoint, we have been compiling information on carbon inventories at company and product level. We have reported our carbon footprint annually in our Sustainability Reports, where you can read more about what Touchpoint's corporate carbon footprint actually consists of. As a company, we could be called carbon neutral because we annually “offset” the emissions of our own operations (scope 2), which are not really high.
Nevertheless, we have chosen to remove the carbon neutral product target from our communications.
Why?
At the product level, carbon footprint calculations can easily be done based on best estimates and common emission databases. We are able to offer our customers "carbon neutral" products by “offsetting” emissions from materials, production and logistics by purchasing climate units equal to the calculated carbon emissions.
Carbon neutrality can be achieved by "offsetting" emissions produced in one sector by reducing them in another, or by purchasing climate units to "compensate” the actual emissions.
We hope that you know that carbon neutrality does not mean that a product or service is emission-free. Because of this common assumption, the term "carbon neutral" is misleading to consumers. And actually, the EU wants to bring clarity to the communication of environmental claims of products to avoid greenwashing and outright misleading consumers. The EU's Green Claims-Directive aims to direct voluntary environmental claims to present environmental impacts as a whole. In addition, voluntary claims should also be based on third-party verified information.
The most important lesson we at Touchpoint have learned in our years of collecting emissions data has been:
1. what our emissions are
2. how and where they are generated
3. how we can influence them.
4. Which aspects of the decisions will bring small reductions and which will bring significant reductions.
We don't want to mislead you in our communications, so we try to be as transparent as possible and in line with the forthcoming directives. To be honest, there is no such thing as zero emission clothing. In the textile sector, most emissions come from the materials used in the textiles. It is important to better understand what we can genuinely do to reduce emissions. For example, we have recently launched ReTouch, a workwear fabric made partly from recycled fibres from old textiles, which has around 10% lower emissions than a similar virgin workwear fabric. We will continue to take concrete action to help make the whole textile sector more sustainable.
Finally, we would like to emphasise that even though our targets have changed, you can get "greenhouse gas credited workwear" from us - so get in touch with our team if you want to work on a joint carbon credited workwear project!
