Kering Ranked Among 10 Most Sustainable Companies in the World
MILAN — Kering’s commitment to sustainability was recognized on Monday during the virtual World Economic Forum in Davos as the French luxury group was ranked among the top 10 most sustainable companies in the world. It was also rated first in clothing and accessory retail for the fourth year in a row.
Kering placed seventh out of 8,080 companies around the world and once again topped its own sector in the Corporate Knights’ 2021 annual Global 100 ranking, considered a benchmark for corporate sustainability. The Global 100 companies represent the top 1 percent in the world on sustainability performance.
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Kering maintained its leadership position in the clothing and accessory retail category among 143 companies, assessed against 24 quantitative key performance indicators ranging from resource management, employee management and financial management to clean revenue and investment and supplier performance.
In particular, Kering ranked highest for environmental performance, clean revenue and clean investment within its industry. Further recognition was awarded under sustainability pay-link as Kering scored 100 percent for best practices related to executive remuneration linked to driving sustainability performance.
Last year, Marie Claire Daveu, Kering’s chief sustainability officer and head of international institutional affairs, underscored how sustainability is no longer an option but essential to the survival of firms, and how the health crisis conceals an opportunity to create awareness on the topic and finally push companies to act rather than just talk about it.
“After and during a crisis, people expect more and more not only from governments but also from companies. They expect them to be leaders and take their part of responsibility,” she said.
One of Kering’s goals is to reduce its environmental footprint by 40 percent by 2025.
Drafting and publishing a profit and loss account to tally the environmental cost of its activities has been key to establishing Kering as an authority on sustainability issues.
Kering chairman and chief executive officer François-Henri Pinault set up the Fashion Pact in 2019 at the request of French President Emmanuel Macron, who wanted companies and the government to work together on environmental issues. To date, more than 250 brands have signed onto the initiative and together, the collective represents more than 35 percent of the industry in terms of product volume.
Last June, the group launched its Kering for Nature Fund, committing to set aside one million hectares of land for the transition to regenerative agricultural practices, while also publicly setting science-based targets on biodiversity.
Since 2011, Kering has been quantifying nature into monetary values across its entire supply chain, using its Environmental Profit and Loss tool.
Specifically, carbon emissions, water consumption, air and water pollution, land use and waste production are captured through the EP&L along the entire supply chain. Its methodology has since been made interactive and open to the industry.
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