The OUR PLANET Label

• Recycled Materials: By re-using the existing fibres and textiles, it reduces the need for newly manufactured fibres.

• Organic Fabrics: Organic fibres must follow stringent criteria that prohibit pollution with pesticides or other chemicals.

• Wood-based Materials: Wood-based materials or fibres originate from the renewable raw material wood. The certified biobased fibres are manufactured using an environmentally responsible production process and/or stem from sustainably managed forests. The fibres themselves are compostable and biodegradable, and thus can fully revert back to nature.

Materials 

Recycled Materials use materials already in circulation rather than virgin materials that further deplete natural resources, use land or cause further pollution

Organic Materials must follow stringent criteria that prohibit pollution with pesticides or other chemicals.

Alternative Materials are defined as materials that are sourced from fast renewable raw materials compares to standard fibres (examples are wood-based viscose, cork or bamboo)

Circularity

Circular products can be used for multiple lifecycles saving on raw materials and the impact on the environment through disposing the item.

Offering a lifetime guarantee/warranty ensure products are built to last for long periods of time reducing the need for new raw materials and preventing environmental impact through disposing the item.

Second-hand products only require minimal resources for a repair or wash before entering the lifecycle again reducing the need for new raw materials and preventing environmental impact through disposing the item.

Increased repairability also extends a product’s lifecycle and thus reducing the need for new raw materials and preventing environmental impact through disposing the item.

Climate

Measuring carbon footprints, setting reduction targets and taking action to reduce the carbon intensity of a product is critical in preventing climate change.

Protection of Land, Water & Biodiversity

Good chemical management does not use hazardous chemicals and/or forever chemicals (e.g. PFCs, PFAs) that pollute and harm planet or people.

Protection of land, soil and biodiversity requires agents to ensure no unnatural degradation occurs in the process of creating their products.

Lower water consumption protects local water sources from harmful depletion.

Waste management focuses on responsible waste treatment through waste prevention, recycling and appropriate disposal.

Emission reduction to water sources focuses reducing pollutants (microfibres, toxins, etc) to reach waterways.

Emission reduction to air focuses on pollutants to the air that are not necessarily included in climate change prevention (e.g. particle pollution).

Environmental Philanthropy rewards investment in environmental protectionist projects and activism.

Free Labour means there is no forced, compulsory or bonded labour

No Child Labour means producers are prohibited from employing children under the national legal working age or 14 years of age, whichever is higher

Minimum Wage requires that all workers – waged and piece rate – are paid wages at least equivalent to the applicable legal national minimum wage or regional norm, whichever is higher; and that workers are paid regularly, on time, and through an appropriate method of payment.

Freedom of Association & Bargaining means the employer recognizes the fundamental importance of the right to freedom of association as a means of representing and defending workers’ interests and considers this right to enable the effective realisation of other labour rights.

Freedom from Discrimination and Equal Compensations means there is no form of discrimination, e.g. in hiring, compensation, access to training, promotion, termination or retirement, based on race, caste, ethnic or national origin, nationality, religion, age, disability, gender, marital status, sexual orientation or other differences that could give rise to discrimination.

No Abuse or Harassment ensures no producer engages in or tolerates the use of corporal punishment, mental or physical coercion, sexual harassment, physical or verbal abuse or harassment of any kind.

Working Hours ensure that working hours comply with national laws or relevant collective agreements, whichever is more favourable to the worker.

Health & Safety requires employers to provide a safe and healthy workplace setting to prevent accidents and injury to health arising out of, linked with, or occurring in the course of work or as a result of the operation of employers’ facilities.

Skills and Development focus on training programs that support employees in their career development

Additional Social Security & Benefits are social benefits like paid sick leave, pension schemes, maternity leave etc.

Women Empowerment focuses on schemes or projects that enable women to join and progress the workforce in a safe manner, e.g. specific recruitment, education for women, training and accelerator programs for women, childcare etc.

Promotion of disadvantaged Groups & Minorities focuses on schemes or projects that specifically foster and promote the career development of minorities

We define animal welfare through the ‘Five Freedoms’, which are globally recognized as the gold standard in animal welfare, encompassing both the mental and physical well-being of animals. They include freedom from hunger and thirst; freedom from discomfort; freedom from pain, injury, and disease; freedom to express normal and natural and freedom from fear and distress.

1. Materials-Based Accreditations

1.1 Recycled

Global Recycled Standard

The GRS is intended to meet the needs of companies looking to verify the recycled content of their products (both finished and intermediate) and to verify responsible social, environmental and chemical practices in their production. The objectives of the GRS are to define requirements to ensure accurate content claims and good working conditions, and that harmful environmental and chemical impacts are minimised. Link

1.2 Wood-Based

Forest Stewardship Council

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is an international non-profit, multistakeholder organization that promotes responsible management of the world's forests, via timber certification. It claims that forests managed to its standards offer benefits to both local and wider communities and these are said to include cleaner air and water, and a contribution to mitigating the effects of climate change. Link

Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification

The Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) is an international, non-profit, non-governmental organization which promotes sustainable forest management through independent third party certification. It is considered the certification system of choice for small forest owners. Link

1.3 Organic

Global Organic Textile Standard – Organic

GOTS is the worldwide leading textile processing standard for organic fibres, including ecological and social criteria, backed up by independent certification of the entire textile supply chain. GOTS certified final products may include fibre products, yarns, fabrics, clothes, home textiles, mattresses, personal hygiene products, as well as food contact textiles and more. Link

Better Cotton Initiative

The Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) is a non-profit, multistakeholder governance group that promotes better standards in cotton farming and practices across 21 countries. BCI farmers receive training on how to use water efficiently, care for the health of the soil and natural habitats, minimise the impact of harmful crop protection practices, preserve fibre quality and apply decent work principles. Link

1.4 Wool

Responsible Alpaca Standard

The Responsible Alpaca Standard (RAS) is an international, voluntary standard that addresses animal welfare in the alpaca supply chain and chain of custody of alpaca fiber material from certified farms to the final product. Link

Responsible Mohair Standard

The Responsible Mohair Standard is a voluntary standard that addresses the welfare of goats and the land they graze on. Link

Responsible Wool Standard

The Responsible Wool Standard (RWS) is an industry tool designed to recognize the best practices of farmers, ensuring that wool comes from farms with a progressive approach to managing their land, and from sheep that have been treated responsibly. Link

Nativa

The NATIVA™ Regenerative Agriculture Program is a robust system with a triple impact based on scientific research and backed by data. It protects the land by bettering its soil quality, safeguards the animals by ensuring their healthy keeping, and supports farmers and local communities by improving their livelihoods. It aims to achieve greater water quality and increased CO2 capturing levels. Link

ZQ or ZQRX

Every ZQ certified grower adheres to requirements about fibre quality, animal welfare and health, social standards around human rights, health & safety and wellbeing, mitigates negative impact on the environment including preserving biodiversity and better water quality. Link

1.5 Down

Down Codex

The Down Codex certificate is only awarded if the strictest ecological and animal-friendly requirements are met, which even exceed the applicable EU law. The origin of the down used in the products can be traced on the internet: Each product contains a sewn-in code that can be entered on the Down Codex website. This provides details on the origin and quality of the down as well as an IDFL animal welfare report. Link

Down Pass

Products labelled with the DOWNPASS guarantee high quality and the certainty that down and feathers used as filling material are ethically sourced and come from tightly controlled and traceable supply chains. Link

Global Traceable Down Standard

The Global Traceable Down Standard (Global TDS) helps companies demonstrate that down in garments and other household and commercial products come from a responsible source that respects animal welfare and can be transparently traced. Link

Responsible Down Standard

The Responsible Down Standard (RDS) aims to ensure that down and feathers come from animals that have not been subjected to any unnecessary harm. The standard is used to reward and influence the down and feather industry to incentivize practices that respect the humane treatment of ducks and geese. The standard also provides companies and consumers with a tool to know what is in their products, and to make accurate claims. Link

1.6 Leather

Leather Working Group

The LWG aims to become a global sustainability standard for leather manufacturing, covering all elements and actors in the leather value chain. The organization focuses on ensuring high environmental standards in leather production and transparency within the leather supply chain. Link

TerraCare Leather

terracare® leather is produced as environmentally respectful as possible: thanks to minimal consumption of resources, transparent origin of raw materials and an optimal recycling rate. It has a 100 % transparent raw material origin, 100 % clean auxiliary materials, at least 97 % recycling/recovery rate, at least 40 % less water consumption and at least 30 % less CO2 spend. Link

What is our intent with the Our Planet?

Our intent is to make it easier for our customers to identify products with an environmental and social focus. Therefore we highlight products using the “Our Planet” label that meet a minimum of three of our identified environmental areas like protection of land, water and biodiversity, reduced emission to air or better chemical management … It can be tricky to navigate the jungle of sustainability accreditations out there so the Our Planet is here to help our consumers to take a product’s environmental and social impact into consideration when buying a product.

(For further information on our criteria, click here)

Do we make any profits from the Our Planet?

The Our Planet criteria have been developed independently by us and are applied to all products and all brands equally. The profits we, or the brands make from a product do NOT influence whether a product receives the Our Planet or not.

Often more sustainably produced products have a higher price tag because the manufacturing processes and the materials required are often more expensive. But at no point have commercial gains influenced the set-up of the Our Planet criteria and its thresholds, nor does it influence which product receives the Our Planet tag.

Can we guarantee an overall positive impact of the Our Planet product on the planet or people?

No.

Even if we sold the most sustainable product that is currently available in the world, it would not fulfil the requirement of being fully sustainable and having no negative impact on the environment in one form or another. Every product, even recycled or second-hand products have at some point depleted resources, used energy, water, land and chemicals to be created, washed, repaired or recycled.

We cannot even guarantee that an Our Planet product has absolutely no negative impact on one or more of the environmental or social area we identified.

What the Our Planet label stands for is that the product has, as a minimum, has sustainability features that meet at least three environmental areas.

But because we rely on external accreditations, certificates and audits, we can only share information about the areas a product are certified for by the accreditations we accept. We do not have any data on the areas the certificates or accreditations DO NOT cover.

For example, we have a product that has a certificate that specifies requirements on climate policy and chemical management. This tells us that the product or brand has a climate policy in place that aims to reduce its energy need and emissions, and that the product does not contain any harmful chemicals in the materials or during the manufacturing process (as per the certificates prohibited chemicals list). But we do not know and cannot guarantee that product’s impact on, for example, biodiversity or water consumption is positive or even net neutral.

Why have the label at all when we cannot guarantee any negative impact on the planet or people in areas we don’t get any information about?

We believe sustainability is a spectrum and a journey. No product is perfect or a 100% sustainable, but that is no reason not to strive for continuous improvement and flag the achievements we have already made.

We want to encourage and reward brands that invest in creating products that more and more keep the planet, people and animals in mind. Highlighting them on our websites and in our stores is their reward for continuing to push the envelope.

We also want to help our consumers to take a product’s environmental and social impact into consideration when making a buying decision. Hence we strive to provide you with information around environmental and social footprint in a concise and easy to find manner.

Yes, we cannot guarantee a positive or even a net zero impact on every single environmental or social impact area we have identified, but we believe that it is important to share where a product does have a positive impact that can be verified either through the product’s material composition information or through the external certificates it has received.

On the whole, we believe it is a better world where products with a positive impact on at least some parts of the environment are highlighted than a world where this information is not shared and these products are treated equally with products where these impacts cannot be certified.

Does the Our Planet make any comparisons with products within our range or products in the wider market?

The Our Planet label does not seek to make comparisons. It aims to provide information around a product’s environmental and social impact to assist the consumer in taking these impacts into account when making a purchase decision.

It simply states that a product which receives the Our Planet label as met at least three of our identified environmental areas through its material composition and/or the external certificates it has received.

The Our Planet label flags products within our range of products and that’s our frame of reference. We don’t know all the outdoor or lifestyle products in the global market and could not possibly judge all of their impacts on all of the complex environmental and social areas.

We can only evaluate the products we sell and for which we request information for from the brands that produce them.

Because we rely on external accreditations as verifications to ensure the positive impacts are audited, it is possible that a product with the same or even better impacts on the environment, does not receive the Our Planet label because the producer/brand decided not to get them validated by one of our selected accreditations, in which case, we cannot give the “Our Planet” label despite the product’s positive impact.

Is the “Our Planet” an official sustainability label? Do we carry out any checks ourselves?

No. It is not an officially recognised label. It’s a trademarked name for our business with the intent to highlight products that follow our list of criteria (for further information on our criteria, click here).

We do not carry out any formal audits of a product’s materials or production sites ourselves. We have based the Our Planet on external accreditations where an external organisation monitors and audits the certificate holders and ensure their compliance with their standards on materials and/or production processes.

To ensure the information we receive from brands about a product’s certificates or its material composition is correct, we carry out spot checks at regular intervals to ensure brands can provide evidence for the claims they make.

Why do we not carry out audits of products ourselves?

In addition to the sheer volume of different products and the capacity required to check the many production sites across the globe where all the products are produced, we do not have the expertise to evaluate their environmental or social impact.

This is why we rely on external accreditations or certificates, where the brand or the product’s production site are audited by the organisation administering the accreditation or the certificate. The accreditation body is responsible for the compliance of their certificate holders with their standards.

We will check at regular intervals that the brands can provide proof of the certifications they hold and that the certificates are up to date.

How did we select the accreditations making up the “Our Planet” label?

We selected internationally recognised accreditation schemes where the certifying body carries out audits to ensure compliance with their requirements.

The accreditations often cover the same environmental or social areas, but with varying levels of ambition, targets and requirements. For example, on climate policy, the Science-based Target of Net Zero by 2040 is significantly more ambitious than the climate standards of the Responsible Wool Standard.

However, we only selected accreditations whose requirements are of a high enough standard to be considered to make a difference to the environment or the social welfare of workers compared to products that would not aim to achieve these targets. For instance, we have not included accreditations that require a producer only to measure their carbon footprint, but accreditations that require producers to set reduction targets, create reduction plans and monitor their progress towards their goals.

Why did the Our Planet criteria change in 2023?

When we launched the Our Planet in 2021, we intended it to be an iterative process because we want to continue pushing for better and better products.

As industry standards change, new technologies and methods, new fibres and materials are developed we must set higher and higher bars to continue the strive for more sustainable products.

With our new version launched in 2023, we have created more transparency around how a product impacts the different areas of the environment, social welfare of workers or animal welfare and created a more ambitious threshold to qualify for the “Our Planet” label.