REDUCING OUR FOOTPRINT FROM THE FACTORY TO YOUR FRONT DOOR

From when a product leaves the manufacturer’s factory to the moment it reaches your hands (and beyond), we are finding new, efficient and energy-conscious ways to reduce our footprint. For us, that is what ‘Better Retail’ is all about.

We are increasing our activities on climate action and by the end of 2021 will operate on 100% renewable energy. We are also reviewing and reducing how much energy we use, beginning with our owned and operated buildings. We have a target to reduce our overall energy consumption in these buildings by 30% (from 2018) by 2025, and our parent company BESTSELLER is going even further by building its very own solar power plant.

Reducing waste is another focus for us. A heck of a lot of time, energy and resources goes into the clothes we make, and we want that to change. That is why we are focused on incorporating a circular mindset and lean production principles into the way we design, make, package, store and transport our products.

Speaking of packaging. From the bags protecting your clothing in transport, to the boxes you receive your orders in, we are working hard to reduce what we create and use. Increasingly, the packaging we use is made from recycled or responsibly sourced materials, with hang tags and care labels getting the same treatment. By 2025, all consumer-facing packaging will be 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable.

And because how you care for your clothes is an important piece of the sustainability puzzle, we offer care guides, repair kits and in-store repair services to help you keep your JACK & JONES clothes in action for as long as possible. When it really is time to let go of your favorite t-shirt, top or jeans, we want to help you to do it in the best way and are currently looking into a partnerships for textile recycling. This would mean we are able to reuse, repurpose and recycle as much as possible. Or, why not rethink the idea of clothes ownership altogether? Our new rental platform lets you lease the clothes you love and reduces waste in the process.

TAKING CLIMATE ACTION ACROSS OUR OPERATIONS

Improving the climate impact of our whole supply chain means making positive changes to the way we operate. From our total energy consumption down to which light bulbs we use, every aspect of JACK & JONES is being reviewed and worked on, because it all adds up right? We are proud to say that as of 2021, all of our owned and operated buildings are powered by 100% renewable electricity. We are going digital for more events, designing new ways to reduce electricity and material use and our holding company HEARTLAND is furthermore building a solar power plant to cover our electricity use with renewable power.

In 2021, we hit our target of powering all of our owned and operated buildings across our supply chain by 100% renewable energy. And by 2022, in line with target, our goal is to reduce our overall global energy consumption in owned and operated buildings by 30%.

The journey to reduce our climate impact starts at HQ. We are transitioning to digital events for things like product launches and training to help reduce our energy consumption and lessen carbon emissions from travel. We have also developed a digital program called Live Template Design which, because we have standardized our fits and styling, means we can experiment with designs ‘live’ on digitized models, shortening the approval process and minimizing the need for samples.

At our retail stores, we are tackling energy use across lighting, heating, ventilation and aircondition as well as phasing out the use of gas, oil and refrigerants through BESTSELLER’s Store FWD program. We have been using energy-saving LED light bulbs since spring 2019 and recently started switching them out for even more efficient ‘smart’ LED bulbs.

Within our warehouses and distribution centers, we have implemented energy-efficient features like high-speed doors to limit heat loss. With e-commerce deliveries, we are transitioning to vehicles powered by biodiesel, hydrogen or electricity. Our partnership with Maersk means clothes sent from our manufacturers to local warehouses will be sent by sea using only CO2 neutral fuel.

And we have bigger things in the works. Through BESTSELLER's holding company HEARTLAND, we are developing Northern Europe’s biggest solar power plant, which will make enough power to offset the energy the entire BESTSELLER group consumes across all of our owned and operated offices, stores, warehouses and distribution centers, around the world. In fact, the aim is to produce more than we use so that more green energy will be available for everyone. You can learn more about this groundbreaking project here.

Of course, our commitment to climate action goes beyond our owned and operated buildings. Check out our Better Materials page to learn about our transition to more climate-friendly fibers and our Better Manufacturing page to learn more about how we are working with our manufacturing partners to reduce the emissions that come from making our clothes.

WORKING TO MAKE “WASTE” A THING OF THE PAST

“Less is more”. True when it comes to style and true when it comes to using valuable resources. By 2025, 100% of key waste streams from our head offices and logistics centers, like paper, cardboard, metal and plastic, will be recycled or reused. Across the board, we are taking an “everyone in” approach to explore waste-saving ideas from on-site cleaning to an online portal for analyzing returns. We are also building our capacity for circular business practices, partnering with innovators like Fashion For Good, Make Fashion Circular and I:Collect to make our closed-loop transition happen as quickly and sustainably as possible. That includes rethinking the idea of clothes ownership altogether, via circular models like our new rental system.

In recent years, we have been testing various circular business models and implementing the ones that we can see working at scale. In 2021, we launched a new rental system that allows us to lease our products to customers for short periods of time, making the clothes affordable for more people and reducing waste from returns or clothing being thrown away. On the platform, we offer up select styles of jeans, tailored clothes and outerwear for a monthly fee of 20-50% the recommended retail price. Consumers are able to choose which products they want to rent and for how long, then return the items using a free return label once the rental period has ended. Clothes are then professionally cleaned and prepped for the next customer. Click here, to get more information.

We are also focused on reducing waste in other areas of our retail operations. For example:

● In stores, we have cut back on how often we change our window and in-store decorations to reduce waste. Since 2019, we have had a goal to reuse as many materials from existing displays as possible when creating new campaigns. This has allowed us to reduce the amount of materials we use by more than two third.

● Our samples are going digital. Rather than making and presenting real products to our wholesale partners, we are creating a new system to move as much as we can online. This means fewer materials being used and less energy being used in production and transport.

● In 2020, a team across BESTSELLER tested over 100 ideas to find ways to reduce the number and impact of the online returns we receive. For instance, we installed environmentally-friendly cleaning equipment at our Returns Center in Poland, meaning we no longer have to send products to an external partner to be cleaned. This relatively small change avoids the need for additional travel and has lessened the use of water, paper and alternative chemicals. We have also created a new online return portal to help us understand why people are returning items, which items they are returning and when. This information is being used by our design and buying teams to help us avoid any recurring issues.

CHANGING HOW WE PACKAGE AND TAG OUR PRODUCTS

Bags, boxes, hang tags, labels — it all adds up. That is why changing how we package and tag our products is a big priority for us. We are phasing out virgin plastic and opting for recycled materials, while designing new processes that cut our need for packaging all together. By the end of 2021, all clear plastic polybags used to protect JACK & JONES products will come from recycled sources. Our hang tags are made with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paper and our care labels are 100% recycled polyester. By 2025, all consumer-facing packaging will be 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable.

Right now all of our polybags, which are used to protect clothes in transport, are made from third party certified recycled plastic. It is our policy that any new plastic packaging be designed in a way that makes it easily recyclable — like being made of one material, with no coloring and labels that can easily be removed — so that it meets mass-recycling standards.

100% of our hang tags are produced with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paper or cardboard. We have created a streamlined BETTER PRODUCT tag where you can easily see the credentials of our more sustainable items. We are also looking at alternative materials like felt and silicone for tags and other types of packaging.

Our care labels that tell you important things like how to wash your item and if an item can be ironed are 100% third party certified recycled polyester. All of our woven labels are made with 20% recycled polyester yarn. By 2022, it will be 50%.

Recycling is only part of the story though. We want to minimize our use of packaging overall. We are on track to reduce our use of polybags by 30% in 2022. We have designed new shipping boxes to reduce waste, energy use and the amount of material needed. They are also smaller, meaning more boxes to each shipping pallet minimizing our storage and transport needs.

HELPING YOU CARE FOR, REPAIR AND RECYCLE YOUR CLOTHES

The lived-in look. It is a style that never goes out of fashion. Handy too, as keeping hold of your clothes for a long time is the most sustainable thing you can do. At JACK & JONES, we are all about designing quality clothing that lasts — it is literally woven into the fabric of what makes us, us. Check out The LAB to see our process in action and read our guide to taking care of your clothes here. Any rips and tears can be fixed with our repair kits or with help from our in-store repair service (available in selected stores). We are increasing our recycling initiatives to reuse and repurpose what is already out there.

Taking good care of your clothes means less washing — something we can all get behind, especially when that also means you are saving water and energy (great for your utilities bill). We want to make caring for your products easy, which is why we have created a handy Caring for your Clothes guide and why we are rolling out simplified care instructions sustainably printed on certain jeans, trousers and outerwear.

Want to keep your favorite pair of blues? Fixing your clothes with our handy repair kits. Visiting your local tailor or repair shop is much better for the environment (and your wallet) than buying something new. You can also bring your items to pop-up in-store repair stations that we set up every month or so in some of our biggest stores. We currently have services available in Antwerp, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Istanbul, Milan, Stockholm and Utrecht, with plans to expand. Contact us here, to get more information about the repair kits.

At some stage, even the best quality clothes will no longer be wearable. From the beginning of 2022, our partnership for textile recycling means you can bring in your old clothes for recycling. After leaving our stores, items get taken to a sorting facility to determine what their next best possible use is — reuse over recycling is the mindset here. Items that can be reworn are redistributed as secondhand. Some clothing gets re-spun into yarn to produce new fabric. Other items become material for cleaning or insulation. Even the dust produced during the recycling process is pressed into briquettes for the cardboard industry. Anything that is not suited to one of these actions is used as a combustible material to produce energy. This initiative will be in 10 stores to start, and we have plans to roll it out to even more.