Our carbon footprint in 2021
Our carbon footprint in 2021
This week, we published our responsibility report for 2021. In it, we comprehensively report on the different areas of our company from the perspective of responsibility. One important part of our responsibility review was to calculate the carbon footprint of our operations for the first time. In 2021, we produced a record number of clothes, because we received an order for Kela's maternity pack 2022. This, as a single factor, naturally increased the amount of our production and therefore we also needed more raw materials. We also joined the Carbon neutral textile industry 2035 commitment, which means our goal is also to start actively reducing our carbon footprint and eventually become carbon neutral.
Greenhouse Gas Protocol
Our carbon footprint has been calculated with the carbon footprint calculator made available to us as a result of the commitment, which complies with the Greenhouse Gas protocol (GHG protocol), which is the global standard for carbon footprint calculation. The GHG protocol is a joint project of the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The annual carbon footprint of one Finn used in the calculator is 10.3 tons per year, based on the latest data from the Finnish Environment Institute.
Emissions are divided into three categories in the Greenhouse Gas protocol:
Scope 1
Emissions belonging to this category are generated directly from our company. In our case, this includes emissions from our own car. These have been calculated by multiplying the kilometers driven by the average consumption.
Scope 2
This category includes purchased energy, i.e. emissions from electricity and heat production. We are renting a property where electricity is purchased from Väre Oy and heated with district heating. The emission coefficients for electricity have been obtained from Väre Oy and Varkaus district heating.
Scope 3
This class is the broadest and most challenging. It includes e.g. emissions from the value chain, procurement and customer use. In the calculation for 2021, we have taken into account the actual quantities of fabric and knitwear production based on the invoices. In the packaging materials, we have taken into account both the materials arriving at us and those leaving us. The packaging materials leaving us have been calculated according to the actual quantities based on purchase invoices, and the quantities arriving at us have been estimated based on weekly measurements. Business travel mainly includes fair and sales trips driven in our own van.
The emissions created directly from our own operations (Scope 1 and Scope 2) in 2021 were 5.74 tons of CO2equivalent emissions. This corresponds to about half of the annual carbon footprint of one Finn. In addition to this, however, we have also wanted to take into account scope 3 emissions from the value chain, i.e. our purchases, in the emissions calculation. These make up the total emissions of our operations, which were in 2021, 135.1 tons of CO2equivalent emissions. This corresponds to approx. 12 Finns' annual carbon footprint.
We produced 26,075 garments in 2021
The share of Kela's maternity package order in the amount of clothes produced in 2021 was remarkably large. We produced our own production in our own sewing room in the amount of 5,991 pieces of clothing and 13,000 pieces of pants for the maternity package. Our subcontractors produced both our own production clothes and 7,084 pieces of maternity pack pants. So in total, in 2021, we produced 26,075 garments. In 2020, 5,443 garments were made in our own sewing shop - the number therefore increased by approx. 250% compared to the previous year.
The emissions per garment were therefore 5.18 kg of CO2 emissions . In reality, different clothes use different amounts of fabric and different clothes have different carbon footprints. We will develop the calculation in the future so that we can also calculate the real carbon footprint of our clothes. It is most affected by the fabric consumption, i.e. how much fabric is used for each clothing model. The calculation includes the total amount of fabric we manufacture, which also includes the material sold directly as fabric. In reality, less fabric has been used for the clothes and the amount of fabric used per garment is lower than in our calculation. We will refine these calculations in our future reports.
Emissions are generated in the Scope 3 category
Most of the emissions in the clothing industry are generated by fabric manufacturing, which is considered in the Scope 3 category. The emissions from our own sewing factory and emissions from, for example, transportation are a significantly smaller part. The most important thing in our field is to pay attention to the choice of materials and the resulting emissions. Many companies only consider the Scope 1 and Scope 2 categories, as they are mandatory for large companies to report. Often, however, the largest emissions occur precisely in the Scope 3 category, and for this reason we also wanted to take them into account in our calculations.
The calculation takes into account Scope 1 and 2 as a whole, as well as Scope 3 for material procurement. Other indirect emissions (transportation to customers, the customer's share of textile use and maintenance) are more challenging to estimate, and our goal is to have them taken into account in our future calculations.
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