Stella McCartney was established in 2001 by Stella McCartney. Headquartered in London, United Kingdom, the brand designs and sells outerwear, bottoms, and other women’s apparel. Their products are manufactured in Italy.
In our pursuit of knowing how sustainable Stella McCartney is, we researched their current practices and how much they are impacting the environment. Areas we explored include raw material use, brand communications, long-term use, energy efficiency, and waste generation.
The larger part of their collection is made of viscose, which is known to have low water requirements and post-consumer waste impact. Additionally, the brand also uses organic cotton, nylon, wool, and silk in manufacturing their clothes. This heavy use of polluting fabrics show that they have lower-than-the-average standards when it comes to sourcing of raw materials.
Stella McCartney values sustainability by actively communicating their green efforts and goals while informing their customers about the most pressing environmental issues. They have marketing campaigns that inspire the public to take steps in improving their global impact. Moreover, they enhance transparency by sharing details of the environmental life-cycle assessment results of their products.
To promote long-term use of their products, they establish initiatives that help consumers reuse their old clothes or repair any damaged articles. That said, they are currently not organizing any garment collecting program that might prompt customers to raise their efforts in reducing their personal waste footprint.
One of the most impressive measures that they are employing in their operations is their use of renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies. What’s more, the brand also hopes to extend this shift as far as the consumer use stage by providing their customers with eco-conscious care instructions.
The environment suffers some adverse impact whenever a package is transported quickly. Unfortunately, it appears that they haven’t taken the most essential step of creating a greener shipping practice. This is made clear by the absence of standard shipping options for their online customers. On top of this, there are also no incentives offered to users who opt out of express shipping methods like overnight and same-day delivery.
Stella McCartney packages their products free of any plastic material. Instead, they are using mainly paperÑa material that is biodegradable, reusable, and recyclable. To further minimize any waste that comes from their products, they use the appropriate size box and fewest possible components to pack their orders in.
After researching how sustainable Stella McCartney is, we determined that, based on their computed score of 5.3 or a rating of Garden Variety, they are reasonably sustainable. This is an average rating and indicates that they are unremarkable with repect to their environmental efforts.