US-based community organiser Anya Dillard meets PUMA’s Teamhead Social Sustainability, Viola Wan to learn more about the challenges garment factory workers face. They also discuss the responsibilities of brands towards women working in their partner factories and what they’re doing to ensure greater gender equity.

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PUMA has ten target areas, each with goals, that PUMA is striving to reach by 2025. This episode focuses on Human Rights. Human rights in the apparel and footwear industry and supply chain refer to the fundamental rights that all workers are entitled to, regardless of their occupation or nationality.

What it actually means: PUMA and other brands must ensure we’re doing everything possible to monitor and improve factory working conditions for all colleagues. This includes being aware of the conditions in factory sites, which brands generally don’t own, and so aren’t as easy to control.

The lowdown:

Goal 1: Train 100,000 direct and indirect staff members on women’s empowerment

How we did in 2022: 168,037 factory workers and 2,077 PUMA employees have been trained so far.

Goal 2: Map subcontractors and Tier 2 suppliers for human rights risks

Clothing brands like PUMA often rely on multiple suppliers. This complexity makes it challenging to monitor and address human rights at every level of their supply chain. They need to create a system that detects and resolves any potential violations quickly. While this work has been ongoing for the last 20 years at PUMA, we wanted to expand the scope from the product manufacturers to their subcontractors and all of their component suppliers.

What we did in 2021 and 2022: Tier 2 and Tier 1 subcontractor mapping completed. In the 2022 Sustainability Report - through collaborative efforts with the sourcing team, we mapped more than 200 non-core Tier 2 suppliers. The next step is to monitor the working conditions of these 200+ factories (See page 61)

(And in case you’re wondering: Tier 2 are factories which manufacture components that go into PUMA products, and Tier 1 are the factories which put the components together to make the final product. A tier 1 may need to use a factory for a specific process that they don’t have in their own factory, like embroidery for example, this is called subcontracting).

Goal 3: 25,000 hours of global community engagement per year

How we did in 2022: We achieved a total of 43,000 hours, 18,000 over target.

PUMA publishes all of its progress, challenges and setbacks in its Sustainability Report. You can find the 2022 report online now by going to about.puma.com

Germany based content creator Luke Jaque-Rodney interviews Klaas Nuttbohm, Implementation Director at ZDHC, an organisation that aims to reduce the fashion industry’s chemical footprint. They discuss how and why making fashion needs chemicals, and what they're doing to lead garment manufacturers towards better alternatives.

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PUMA has ten target areas, each with goals, that PUMA is striving to reach by 2025. This episode focuses on the target area of Chemicals.

Chemicals are a crucial component in the fashion industry – found in the dyes used to colour the fabrics, chemicals used in recycling processes such as RE:FIBRE, or chemicals that add functionality - such as waterproofing – to a garment or shoe. Have you ever stain-guarded your shoes? Well, that’s chemicals. And the industry needs to use better ones.

Goal 1: Ensure 100% of PUMA products are safe to use

In 2022, we had no product recalls

Goal 2: Maintain RSL compliance rate above 90%

RSL stands for Restricted Substance List of chemicals. Before products get packed up and shipped off, the components they are made of have been tested for the presence of the chemicals that are on this list. In 2022 we had a compliance rate of 98.5%. Of the 1.5% that didn’t pass, these materials were not used in production.

Goal 3: Reduce organic solvent usage to under 10 g/pair

Ever opened a box of shoes and been overwhelmed by the smell? That’s the smell of organic solvents used within glues or cleaning solutions that are applied to footwear. These are known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs.

In 2022, PUMA had a VOC index of 13.2 g/pair that has reduced from 66.7 since 2003. This is important because exposure to high volumes can harm the environment and anyone who comes into contact with these compounds.

After being used, chemicals have to go somewhere - and so this episode has talked a lot about waste water. PUMA also has goals on improving on this, stated under the Water & Air Target Area. Keep an eye out for that episode to find out more, and see how we’re tracking in the show notes.

PUMA publishes all of its progress, challenges and setbacks in its Sustainability Report. You can find the 2022 report online now by going to about.puma.com

US-based fashion designer and upcycler Andrew Burgess chats with PUMA’s Senior Manager, Corporate Strategy, Simon Hessel, about upcycling materials and defining 'circularity', the role of brands vs shoppers in ensuring more sustainable fashion and how PUMA’s RE:FIBRE project is a step towards a better future.

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PUMA has ten target areas, each with a set of goals, that we are striving to reach by 2025. This episode focuses on the target area of Circularity. Circular fashion is about extending a product’s lifespan through reuse, reselling, upcycling, repairing or, at the end of a products useful life, recycling.

What it actually means: For PUMA, circularity means projects like RE:FIBRE, that create a loop by turning old clothes into new ones so we don't need to use new material to make new garments. Or RE:SUEDE, PUMA’s experiment in creating a biodegradable shoe.

Goal 1: Establish ‘takeback’ schemes in all major markets

The PUMA takeback scheme is where we encourage consumers to give us back their old clothes when they’re done with them. At the moment, PUMA’s focus is on polyester garments, encouraging people to drop off their PUMA cast-offs to be recycled via our RE:FIBRE program. This has successfully rolled out with partner football clubs including Manchester City, AC Milan, Borussia Dortmund, Olympique de Marseille.

Goal 2: Reduce production waste to landfills by at least 50% compared to 2020

Production waste is mainly the material that is not needed when cutting the pattern to make garments or shoes - ie. the offcuts. In 2022, we had 48% less waste to landfill per pair of shoes compared to 2020. However, we saw a 1% increase per apparel piece from 2020. This increase was mainly due to the on-boarding of new strategic factories in 2022 that have not yet worked on this target.

Goal 3: Develop recycled material options for leather, rubber, cotton and polyurethane

We increased the use of recycled cotton and rubber. We launched PUMA RE:COLLECTION made of recycled cotton and polyester and RE:GEN collection made of regenerated leather and recycled cotton. We’re continuing to increase the number of products using these recycled materials across our range.

PUMA publishes all of its progress, challenges and setbacks in its Sustainability Report. You can find the 2022 report online now by going to about.puma.com