prAna

How sustainable is prAna?

This scree­ning has been done by Fairify 

PrA­na is an out­door brand that’s part of the Colum­bia Sports­wear Com­pa­ny, an Ame­ri­can out­door com­pa­ny that also owns Colum­bia, Sorel and Moun­tain Hard­wear. The mother com­pa­ny only publis­hes one sustai­na­bi­li­ty report, which we con­sul­ted for prAna’s rating. For­tu­na­te­ly, the out­door brand dis­tin­guis­hes itself from the other affi­li­a­ted brands by pro­mo­ting sustai­na­bi­li­ty on its own website.

Points for wool and cotton

PrA­na sco­res extra points on mate­ri­al use. For example, it uses recy­cled wool and 100% Orga­nic cot­ton, which is either OCS or GOTS cer­ti­fied. Unfor­tu­na­te­ly, there’s not enough transpa­ren­cy con­cerning the other mate­ri­als. It’s unclear what per­cen­ta­ge of (ani­mal) mate­ri­als is actu­al­ly cer­ti­fied. To a lar­ge extent, we still have to base our judg­ment on the sustai­na­bi­li­ty report of the parent com­pa­ny, which also lacks transparency. 

Lack of transparency on other materials

The Colum­bia Sports­wear Com­pa­ny sta­tes that it sour­ces 50% of its mate­ri­als from Blue­sign cer­ti­fied faci­li­ties, but we’re in the dark con­cerning the other half. We see that the com­pa­ny uses a lar­ge amount of poly­es­ter, which is deri­ved from oil and harm­ful to the envi­ron­ment, but we have no clue about what the actu­al per­cen­ta­ge is. Most com­pa­nies cur­rent­ly inclu­de tables with per­cen­ta­ges of mate­ri­als being used in their repor­ting, and this pie­ce of the puzz­le is mis­sing at Colum­bia. Ani­mal mate­ri­als are some­what okay: the down is cer­ti­fied through the Res­pon­si­ble Down Standard and sheep mule­s­ing is for­bid­den, but the com­pa­ny does use uncer­ti­fied leather.

Basic workers’ rights are upheld

PrA­na also shows that it con­si­ders human rights impor­tant, as it works together with Fair Tra­de cer­ti­fied faci­li­ties. Unfor­tu­na­te­ly, in this area as well, it’s unclear what per­cen­ta­ge of fac­to­ries is actu­al­ly cer­ti­fied. We, again, have to con­sult the parent com­pa­ny’s sustai­na­bi­li­ty report, but the Colum­bia Sports­wear Com­pa­ny is sim­ply not transpa­rent about its sup­ply chain. It’s a mem­ber of the Fair Labor Asso­ci­a­ti­on, which has an ela­bo­ra­te Code of Con­duct that gets audi­ted by third par­ties, so we can assu­me that basic wor­kers’ rights are being upheld. Howe­ver, they could be impro­ved through an orga­ni­za­ti­on like the Fair Wear Foun­da­ti­on to ensu­re pay­ment of a living wage, of which the­re are cur­rent­ly no mentions.

Unambitious climate action

The mother brand’s report doesn’t pro­vi­de fur­ther infor­ma­ti­on about envi­ron­men­tal acti­on. The Colum­bia Sports­wear Com­pa­ny has yet to set any sub­stan­ti­al cli­ma­te tar­gets. Its repor­ting is incom­ple­te and doesn’t inclu­de the rele­vant data that we need to ful­ly under­stand its ope­ra­ti­on. Even though it’s in pos­ses­si­on of the envi­ron­men­tal data, such as ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy and car­bon emis­si­ons, it’s mis­sing in the reports. The only men­ti­on of rene­wa­ble ener­gy rela­tes to the head­quar­ters, whe­re the Ame­ri­can com­pa­ny uses a very small per­cen­ta­ge. The­re have been expe­ri­ments with bet­ter pack­a­ging pro­jects, but they’re not real­ly nota­ble. Ship­ping in the US always hap­pens through the UPS Car­bon Neu­tral pro­gram and a list of pro­duc­ti­on faci­li­ties has been publis­hed. On the ups­i­de, the com­pa­ny does men­ti­on that it’s loo­king for sup­pliers to imple­ment ener­gy effi­ci­en­cy and car­bon emis­si­on reduc­ti­on ini­ti­a­ti­ves and that it works together with the Higg Index to impro­ve its envi­ron­men­tal per­for­man­ce. All in all, prA­na dis­tin­guis­hes itself from the other affi­li­a­ted brands by offe­ring more infor­ma­ti­on, but it’s just not enough to posi­ti­on them as a sustai­na­ble brand.