Industrial thread manufacturer Coats has committed to establishing science-based targets across its entire value chain, a target that has aligned many other fashion industry stakeholders in limiting global warming to 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels. The company, based in the UK, has also set the long-term target of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, the highest level of ambition on climate under the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).
Coats will now work with the SBTi – collaboration between CDP, the United Nations Global Compact, World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) – to outline tailored targets that will bring about sustainable improvements within the firm’s supply chain.
Such targets centre on reducing carbon emissions across scopes one to three, and ensuring that the efforts put in at the raw material extraction phase through to the finished goods’ assembly are harmonised in striving to mitigate unnecessary CO2. Only recently the company joined the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s industry network, which supports businesses in their transition to work by the principles of a circular economy.
In 2018, Coats launched its current sustainability strategy which includes a number of targets to be met by 2022. The plan focuses on five priority areas: water, energy, effluent, emissions and social sustainability. As it doubles down on its commitment to sustainability then, Coats’ group Executive Chairman, Rajiv Sharma, said: “Making commitments like this to address our emissions builds on our sustainability strategy and demonstrates our resolve to be a role model and catalyst for change in the area of climate change.
“We have already laid out an ambitious set of targets in our sustainability strategy. A key part of the Coats company purpose is to make a better and more sustainable world.”
Sanda Ojiambo, CEO and Executive Director of the UN Global Compact, one of the SBTi partners, added: “The climate emergency has led CEOs to act urgently and decisively to set science-based emissions reduction targets for their companies in line with a 1.5°C pathway. The movement to transition to a net-zero economy by 2050 is also growing rapidly, and we call on all business leaders to adopt concrete plans to realise this goal.”
