Texon Publishes First Sustainability Report; Reaffirms Zero Waste Ambition & Documents Environmental Efforts to Date

Texon has published its first annual Sustainability Report, highlighting progress toward its four sustainability goals and reaffirming our ambition to become a zero waste business by 2025.

Texon’s 2019 Sustainability Report looks in detail at the company’s environmental efforts over the last five years and reveals a number of achievements to date including: a 114% increase in the use of recycled materials since 2015; a 43% reduction in energy consumption; and a €1 million (euro) investment in equipment that enables the business to take recycled fibre from more sources than ever.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT HERE (PDF)

Texon announced its zero waste ambition in February – reinforcing its long-standing commitment to the development of sustainable footwear components, materials for consumer applications and performance fabrics. By 2025, Texon aims to have achieved its four sustainability goals, which are:

• Reduce its carbon footprint by 50%

• Reduce its use of virgin materials by 50%

• Ensure 90% of its waste is recyclable or reusable

• Reduce water use and waste by 20%.

The inaugural Texon Sustainability Report features baseline figures from 2015 onwards, which will be used to monitor the company’s performance moving forwards and included in future annual Sustainability Reports from the business.

Key highlights show that:

Texon has substantially reduced its carbon footprint since 2015 with an average reduction of 2,835,194 kg of CO2 emissions (48%) across all sites surveyed and a 23% reduction in CO2 per net tonne of product since 2015. That’s the same as reducing emissions, on average per site, by the equivalent of a passenger flying from London to New York and back, every day, for four years. The business has also achieved a 43% reduction in total energy use and a 6% reduction per net tonne of product since 2015.

As well as increasing its use of recycled materials by 114% since 2015, Texon has, on average, reduced its use of virgin materials by 11% by taking a circular approach to product design. Many Texon products already contain up to 85% recycled content and the business has plans to increase this further across the portfolio.

In parallel, Texon is actively exploring the use of more plant-based materials – e.g., from non-GMO plant scraps. Between 2017 and 2018, Texon recovered more than 430,000 kg of paper scraps from its customers. These scraps, together with the procurement of 2,500,000 kg of recycled wasted paper, replaced the use of over 3,000,000 kg of virgin cellulose, equivalent to saving 11,000 trees from being cut down. The business also invested more than €1milion (euros) in a paper pulper that enables it to use toilet roll ends and napkins as a raw material.

Between 2017 and 2019, Texon reduced its own production waste by 45%. Many of the company’s products are now also 100% recyclable – including Texon Ecoline, a new product that is part of Texon’s closed loop programme. This work supports Texon’s commitment to ensuring that the vast majority of its waste is recyclable or reusable.

Texon has reduced the withdrawal of water from each of its plants by an average of 65% since 2015 and by 16% per net tonne of product. That’s the equivalent of just under two Olympic swimming pools worth of water saved, on average, by each site since 2015.

Jelle Tolsma, CEO of Texon, said:

“It’s great to see the significant progress we’ve made with our environmental efforts over the last five years. At Texon, sustainability is woven into every decision we take and it’s been this way for a long time. Our new report reflects this – demonstrating that we have a solid base to build on and to benchmark future activities against. Moving forward, sustainability remains one of our top priorities, despite the COVID-19 crisis.”

“The fashion industry is often criticized for its environmental impact. As a core supplier to some of the world’s biggest clothing and shoe brands, we are actively developing materials that have less of an impact on the planet. We are proactively documenting this journey under our ‘zerofootprint’ banner. The publication of our first sustainability report is central to this work – enabling us to transparently communicate our in-house efforts, and our environmental work with our suppliers and supply chain partners.”

To further support its ambitions, Texon has numerous new sustainability initiatives underway including:

• Exploring the use of renewable energy tariffs and green energy sources
• Looking at the potential to use waste from coffee production to create new materials
• Studying tree extracts with antifungal and antibacterial benefits to replace pigments
• Leveraging existing supply chain relationships
• Expanding its net delivery infrastructure
• Developing deeper relationships with waste convertors
• Increasing its own wastewater treatment methods so more water can be recycled.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT HERE (PDF)