The next frontier for fashion: becoming climate positive

YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP has committed to become climate positive by 2030.

Our decision to become climate positive reflects our ambition to play a bigger role in protecting our planet, acting responsibly, and making impact on behalf of our company, colleagues, and our customers.

Becoming climate positive means going beyond achieving net zero carbon emissions to create an environmental benefit. We won’t stop at making our own labels and operations carbon neutral. We’ve committed to keep on investing in projects that will allow us to contribute to cleaning the air from more emissions than we alone are responsible for generating.

To achieve our goal of climate positivity, we are:

• Reducing our business’ carbon emissions as much as possible across the value chains of our private label collections and our own operations, including buildings, travel and logistics.
• Committing to the Science Based Targets initiative as part of Richemont to further reduce our emissions in line with the Paris Agreement.
• Offsetting unavoidable emissions from our own operations, plus more, through investment in environmental compensation schemes.

How are we reducing our carbon emissions?

Back in 2014, we were the first online luxury fashion retailer, and one of the very early members, to join RE100 – the corporate initiative which brings together some of the world’s most influential businesses committed to using 100% renewable electricity – when it was founded. We have celebrated some big milestones along this journey, with our Italian facilities being validated as using 100% renewable energy in 2018, and our US facilities following suit in early 2020. And, in July 2021, Climate Group as part of RE100 confirmed that YOOX NET-A-PORTER had met our ultimate goal to fully power the 17 warehouses and offices that we manage in seven markets with renewable electricity by the end of 2020. Renewable electricity has now become our status quo.

To reduce our footprint further, we continue to accelerate our efforts to reduce emissions across our operations and are working together with our parent company, Richemont, to participate in their commitment to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), for emissions reduction in line with the Paris Agreement. It will be the most comprehensive way for our business to address the climate crisis, by setting targets that are independently assessed in line with the SBTi’s strict criteria. Richemont’s targets, submitted for independent evaluation by SBTi in May 2021 pending final validation, relate to Scopes 1, 2 and 3 and encompass a variety of measures including absolute reductions intensity and supplier engagement.

In the meantime, making our customers’ shopping experience more sustainable by default is central to our ongoing work. Whether offering more responsible delivery options – such as our MR PORTER same-day delivery fleet in Milan that is entirely electric, or trialling new pick-up and access points – making our recyclable packaging even easier to recycle at home, starting to remove paper delivery notes, or continually increasing the information and tools available during the online shopping journey, our goal is to enable our customers to make conscious choices for the environment.

How are we offsetting at YOOX NET-A-PORTER?

Currently, we are compensating for the carbon emissions we absolutely cannot avoid, investing in helping to clean the air from greenhouse gases that we have generated. To do so, we contribute to Richemont’s carbon offsetting programme by purchasing carbon offset credits that help to fund certified regeneration projects.

Our offsetting programme, through Richemont, supports projects around the world:

The major projects to which we contribute relate to forest preservation facilitated by Peace Parks Foundation, specifically the ‘Lower Zambezi REDD+ Project’ and ‘Luangwa Community Forests Projects’. REDD+ stands for countries’ efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and foster conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

This impactful scheme along the Zambezi River preserves the wild forests by bringing a steady flow of cash to the communities who live there, on the agreement that the forests which surround them are conserved. Overall, the project protects 61km of the Lower Zambezi National Park boundary. It helps to avoid 160,000 tonnes of carbon emissions each year and protects over 40,000 hectares of wildlife habitat, as well as offering community support through increased income for 80% of households in the project area and 500 students participating in education programmes.

Other projects include rainforest and biodiversity protection in Peru, and clean power generation in China. In Peru, we contribute to investment in sustainable nut processing, forest protection and the establishment of a federation of concessionaires; through these means, farmers in the Peruvian Amazon help protect a huge biodiversity hotspot from deforestation. The Everbright landfill project in China captures the methane emissions from a landfill and uses it for clean power generation, improving the lives of locals and contributing to sustainable development.  

Overall, our goal is to take more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than we put in.

Reducing our emissions in and of itself is a vast undertaking, and our even greater ambition of climate positivity poses an exciting challenge for the future. It does and will require a re-design of the way we do things. Continued collaboration with our partners and customers to find, share, and adopt new solutions will help us to achieve climate positivity and improve the environmental impact of the luxury and fashion industry, together.