The German apparel company Armedangels has released its 2023 "Action Report," a tool for accountability and transparency. Along with the label's dedication to sustainability and corporate responsibility, it showcases projects and partners.
The report sheds light on the business's approach to materials and sustainability as well as its initiatives to create a circular economy. Last year, there was a strong emphasis on transparency and traceability throughout the supply chain, with several milestones being reached in these areas.
For the first time, Armedangels can share the carbon footprint not just at the corporate level but also at the product level, throughout the supply chain, and looking backwards for the previous three years. 9.08 kg CO2e was the average CO2 product footprint.
"Knowing our carbon footprint is essential because it helps us pinpoint the best change agents. Julia Aruni Kirschner, director of impact and innovation at Armedangel, stated in a press release that "it is essential for everyone - politicians, society, individuals, and companies like ours - to take responsibility in an industry with such a significant footprint as fashion."
Additional benchmarks include increasing the percentage of recycled materials used from 6% in 2022 to 12% in 2023. These are materials, such as cotton, wool, polymers, and cellulose, that are recovered during the production process. The business hopes to raise this percentage even higher.
At the moment, eighty-four percent of its fibers are natural, including hemp, organic and recycled cotton, and linen and recycled linen. For animal fibers, it uses alpaca, recycled wool, and wool. An additional 13 percent consists of synthetic cellulose fibers from Lenzing, an Austrian manufacturer of fibers, which include Lyocell x Refibra, Tencel, Ecovero, Modal, and Tencel Luxe. The remaining 3% are made up of polymers.
The smallest portion of our material mix is composed of polymers; only 0.1 percent are virgin polymers and 2.9 percent are recycled. Though we hope to replace these with cutting-edge materials like cellulose fibers, it is currently not economically feasible to replace the remaining 0.1 percent of new polymers with recycled ones because of high costs and negligible reduction in CO2. As a result, we concentrate on areas in which we can make a bigger difference, as stated by Armedangels in the Action Report 2023.
Over the course of five harvest seasons, the company assisted 500 Indian farmers in switching from conventional to organic cotton, from April 2018 to July 2023. This included 992 hectares under cultivation, with 61 drip irrigation systems set up.