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Posted on October 23, 2008 @ 08:45:00 AM by Paul Meagher
In Gary Hirshberg's 2008 book,
Stirring It Up, he discusses some innovations at Timberland. One type of green innovation that Timberland is in the forefront off is eco-labelling. Eco-labelling aims to educate comsumers about the impacts of the apparel products they are purchasing by indicating how much energy was used to produce the product, how much renewable energy was used, where the product came from, and how it affected the community where it was produced (i.e., not child labor in a third world country). Eco-labelling is ideally complemented by using "boxes made of 100 percent post-consumer, recycled-waster fiber. Boxes that use water-based solvents in place of chemical glues, and labels printed with soy-based, rather than traditional petroleum-based inks." ~ p. 77
In Timberland's case, they go a bit further and use the tissue wrap to communicate environmental calls to action and educational info about animals.
At the end of the day, Timberland CEO Jeff Swartz believes these innovations helps his bottom line by giving him a competitive advantage with consumers (as judged by his year-to-year growing sales). He claims that this is not his primary motive and would ideally like to see all apparel retailing companies using such eco-labelling.
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