Levis Jeans Just Got Greener

Levi Strauss believes in integrating sustainability into every aspect of its business – from the cultivation of cotton to educating customers to use less water when they have to wash their jeans

Levi Strauss, the first company to commercially manufacture the ubiquitous pair of jeans, may be the ultimate in “slow fashion” as it believes in making products that last for years and bucking the use-and-throw “fast fashion” phenomenon that rules the clothing industry. And its strategy appears to be paying off.  

Established by German migrant, Levi Strauss, in 1853, the San Francisco-based company has faced off other jeans-making challengers as well as general fashion-wear labels that also manufacture denims.

The reason Levi’s has held up relatively well despite the fierce competition is because the company puts sustainability at the heart of what it does, says Roy Bagattini, Executive Vice President and President, Asia, Middle East and Africa, in a recent interview.

“Sustainability is something that’s in the core DNA of Levi’s for a long, long time,” he says. “It’s consistent with our values as a company. We talk about profits with principles – which is doing great business but doing it the right way.”

The company has seen steady revenue growth over the past decade, and has managed to remain a mainstay in the fickle fashion industry.

It has done so by taking the extra effort to pioneer initiatives on “all fronts of sustainability” including innovations in manufacturing processes, “terms of engagement” for all suppliers – or a code of conduct – and getting employees to give back to communities through volunteer work.

From cradle to grave

One of these initiatives is the Lifecycle Assessment (LCA), first conducted in 2007 and subsequently updated in 2013. The LCA is a process to assess the environmental impact of a product, service or process from cradle to grave.

Different products, services or processes have different methods of calculating their impact but at the heart of all LCAs is the compilation of energy and resource usage and the evaluation of the potential impact of the usage.

In the case of a pair of jeans, the LCA studies the impact of the entire manufacturing process from raw material extraction, that is, the growing of cotton, to when a consumer discards the denims, Bagattini explains.

Levi’s latest LCA built on previous research to better understand the impact of cotton cultivation and includes data from the world’s primary cotton producers such as United States, China, Brazil, India, Pakistan and Australia.

It also studies consumer care data from Levi Strauss’s new markets, including China, France and the United Kingdom, to understand the differences in laundry habits.

What the company found helped it overhaul a part of its manufacturing process to make it more efficient and embark on a worldwide consumer-awareness campaign.

Through the LCA, Levi Strauss learnt that nearly 3,800 litres of water are used through the lifetime of a pair of jeans. That’s the equivalent of 109 five-minute showers.  

About 68 percent of that goes towards cotton production and 23 percent is used by consumers in the laundry, the LCA found. Consumer care is also responsible for the most significant energy use and climate impact, representing 37 percent of the 33.4 kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted during the jeans’s lifetime.

Because water is such a huge part of the jeans production process, Levi Strauss wanted to find out how it can reduce its water footprint.

One billion litres saved

To conserve water, Levi Strauss started in 2011 to progressively introduce the Water

Media

Taxonomy

• Textile
• Conservation
• Green Technology