Sustainability

Sustainability: Doing the Right Thing for the Product, the People and the Planet

For the past 25 years, building quality products that last has been our

approach to sustainability. Choosing materials for durability as well as performance has earned us a reputation for quality and an extremely low warranty rate. We are proud of our ability to quickly identify common failure points and design them out of each iteration of our products. Despite our growing business, we have fewer and fewer damaged/returned items to sell at our warehouse sale each year.

From an ecological perspective, however, this focus on making durable products is not enough to meet the growing environmental challenges we face today. We’ve looked at the ways in which our manufacturing processes impact the environment, and identified areas for improvement. Our goal is to make a meaningful change to our environmental impacts, without sacrificing the durability and high level of performance we demand from our products. This is a balancing act: how do we do the right thing for the product, the people, and the planet?

A “Recycled” Label is Not Enough

Including more recycled content in our products is among our goals, but it does not address the biggest environmental impacts of producing waterproof-breathable technical apparel. The energy used to power production facilities and the chemicals used in textile dyeing and production are often the cause of the most pollution in the manufacturing chain.

The bluesign® system works to combat this by uniting the entire textile supply chain to jointly reduce its impact by eliminating substances posing risks to people and the environment from the beginning of the supply chain.

We are already using bluesign® certified dyes on our new Clean Color apparel collection, and plan to expand that line with each factory build, eventually moving to bluesign® certified dyes for all our products. The factory that produces 80% of our garments is already bluesign® certified, as is our primary fabric mill and we are committed to helping our other factory partners achieve bluesign® certification over the coming years.

While our impact as a small-medium sized company cannot save the world, we will act as though it will. Perhaps we can inspire others to follow suit, and tackle these issues as a global community.

The Long-Range Plan: Showers Pass Sustainability Goals for 2025 1. 100% of our products will be made with a minimum of 50% or more recycled content. 2. All Apparel will be made with bluesign® approved dyes in bluesign® approved factories. 3. 100% of wool will meet the Responsible Wool Standard, and be sourced from farms that treat animals humanely, where mulesing is not practiced. 4. Showers Pass US will have a product end-of-life recycling program. 5. All Showers Pass packaging will be made from Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certified wood or recycled material, and have the ability to be recycled or composted. 6. Showers Pass’ US headquarters will be carbon positive, generating more energy than it consumes and we will encourage factory partners to get at least 50% of their energy from renewable sources as well.