Taking a ‘stand up to business as usual’ approach, renewable wood fiber producer the Lenzing Group outlined its commitment to sustainable practices in its recently released Sustainability Report for 2019.
The company noted that when it comes to climate change, business as usual scenarios have to be overcome; thus the company is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emission per ton of product by 59% by 2030.
“Climate change is the most daunting challenge humanity faces,” said Stephan Doboczky, CEO.
“By making the strategic commitment to be climate-neutral by 2050, we will contribute to reducing the speed of global warming and to accomplishing the targets of the Paris climate agreement.”
To address the issue of textile waste, the company developed its Refibra recycling technology, which enables garment production waste to be reprocessed into fibers. “Lenzing’s vision is to turn the recycling of textile waste into a common standard process like paper recycling,” said Robert van de Kerkhof, Chief Commercial Officer.
“This includes recycling fabrics and garments made of Lenzing materials.
We want Lenzing fibers produced with Refibra technology to contain up the 50 percent recycled materials.”
Transparency within the value chain was another issue highlighted in the report. Lenzing’s response has been a blockchain technology in cooperation with TextileGenesis that enables customers and consumers to trace the production of a garment to the raw material by scanning a barcode. In 2019, Lenzing presented its first pilot project during the Hong Kong Fashion Summit.
