the sustainable apparel coalition

In 2011, we became a founding member of the Sustainable Apparel Coalitionlink opens in a new window (SAC), a group of more than 200 brands, retailers, suppliers, non-profits and NGOs who work to reduce the environmental and social impacts of apparel and footwear products around the world. The coalition’s first major project was to create The Higg Index, link opens in a new window a tool to help the industry measure the impact of materials, packaging, manufacturing processes and transportation on the environment.

In 2012, Target began asking business partners and their factories producing Target-brand products to use the Higg Index, a self-assessment. The results are part of our business partners' annual scorecards. 

tier two environmental oversight

At Target, we recently expanded our Standards of Vendor Engagement to include environmental sustainability standards and we are applying them within our merchandise supply chain to ensure our partners are achieving and sustaining a high level of environmental performance.

To apply these standards, we go beyond our tier one suppliers to also work with our tier two apparel textile suppliers using our Secondary Facilities Oversight (SFO) program. The SFO was modeled upon a framework created by the Natural Resources Defense Council for brands developing supply chain policies to improve environmental performance. We’ve taken initial steps to apply the framework by mapping Target’s tier one and tier two apparel and textile suppliers as published within our global factory list, accessible here. Currently, all tier one and tier two apparel textile suppliers disclose environmental impacts related to their production using the Sustainable Apparel Coalition’s Higg Facilities Environmental Module (FEM). Target also holds tier two apparel textile suppliers accountable by using the Higg FEM verification process to audit and ultimately elevate their environmental performance.

Those results are subject to third party verification and are mapped against the applicable environmental sustainability standard to ensure compliance and to promote excellent environmental performance within our supply chain.

clean by design

Target partners with the Apparel Impact Institute’s (Aii) Clean by Design (CbD) program, which identifies practical, cost-saving opportunities so that our suppliers can increase operational efficiencies in their factories, while simultaneously reducing resource usage, waste and emissions. 

In 2011, in collaboration with our suppliers, we piloted the 10 best practices of Clean by Design in three Chinese textile mills, and saw significant savings in water and energy use. Encouraged by those results, and in continued collaboration with additional suppliers, we expanded the program in 2012, onboarding an additional 60 mills into the CbD program. 

The facility improvements adopted by our suppliers’ participating mills have yielded strong results. Through the CbD program in 2016, seven participating mills reduced water use by more than 940,000 tons—on average, water usage was down 8 percent. In addition, all 10 participating mills in 2016 saved more than 10,000,000 kWh of energy. 

Then through Cohort 1 of our 2018 CbD program, the 20 participating mills reduced water use by an average rate of 20 percent, saving 3,560,000 tons. They also lowered energy consumption by an average rate of 12 percent. As a result, Cohort 1 reduced more than 111,000 tCO2e in greenhouse gas emissions in 2018.

To date, together with our suppliers, we have engaged 63 Chinese mills in the Clean by Design program, which is just one of the ways we partner with our supply chain to use resources responsibly. It’s a key element of reducing carbon emissions throughout our business to meet our ambitious climate goals, which were approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative.

supply chain transparency

Target’s Responsible Sourcing strategy is grounded in our commitments to supply chain transparency and to embrace opportunities to drive positive change. As one example, in 2017, the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE) in China launched its Green Supply Chain Map.

Using credible, publicly available data, IPE’s Map provides both real-time performance data and historical trend information related to air pollution emissions and wastewater discharge for thousands of major Chinese manufacturing facilities. Target supports the initiative by sharing our supplier factory list and maintaining updates for use in IPE’s mapping efforts. Map users can click the Target logos to access information on those factories’ environmental performance and sustainability efforts.     

Vietnam Improvement Program

Since 2016, we have partnered with International Finance Corporation (IFC) to create the Vietnam Improvement Program (VIP), which aims to promote environmentally-efficient manufacturing  in Vietnam, focused on apparel garment and fabric manufacting factories. In 2017, 10 of our vendors’ factories realized over 1 million cubic meters of water savings and 130 million kWh of energy savings per year.