PRESS RELEASE: EnduraWhen we launched their One Million Trees initiative at the start of 2020, we committed to planting one million trees annually for the next ten years to ultimately eliminate the brand’s carbon footprint. With the help of their reforestation partners in Mozambique, the first year’s target was exceeded by 30%, with more than 1.3 million mangroves planted in the Maputo Bay area and plans to start planting here in Scotland soon. With this important milestone met, Endura has now set a bold new target - to become carbon negative by 2024.
Pamela Barclay, Endura’s co-founder and Brand Director, who initiated the One Million Trees project and is leading efforts to reduce the brand’s environmental impact on a number of fronts is naturally delighted with the progress that’s been made. “With Covid-19 tragedy and disruption affecting communities around the world, it has meant so much more to have hit our Million Trees target this year and is a phenomenal start, but it’s just year one. Our ten-year commitment to match this level of planting will deliver real benefits and enable Endura to achieve carbon negative status very quickly”.
Pamela is also quick to add that “reducing our environmental impact is core to everything we’re doing at Endura; carbon offsetting, removing PFCs, designing for longevity, use of recycled fabrics and materials, and in-house repair services are part of a companywide approach that takes us further on our journey. We still have a long way to go, but we’re heading in the right direction.”
The immediate and dreadful effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have dominated headlines throughout 2020, but the climate emergency continues to pose a very real threat to the planet and requires urgent action. In a project led by Endura’s founder and Managing Director, Jim McFarlane, the company’s activities right from fabric production to product end-of-life have been examined to calculate the company’s total carbon emissions in order to quantify the sequestration required to neutralize.
The main driver of emissions for Endura continues to be the production of the materials required to manufacture its range of apparel and accessories. Each step in the manufacturing processes emits CO2 into the environment. Collaboration with other brands in the Pentland Brands portfolio and across the industry will be required to help switch upstream suppliers to renewable energy to make a meaningful reduction in this element. Even so, the amount of CO2 per unit produced is forecast to reduce by 7% per year resulting in a 25% reduction between 2020 and 2025. This is expected to continue to decline at 6% year-on-year as China’s green energy projects start to come on-stream.
The transport of goods from the production powerhouses in the Far East forms the next largest segment of Endura’s emissions, and they plan to reduce the use of air freight by 75% over the next two years, partly by switching to overland train services when sea freight is too slow. Sending orders out to Endura’s network of dealers and direct to consumers also has an impact on emissions but given that the relative distances are much smaller it has a lower impact than the process of moving containers from East Asia to its main markets in the UK, Europe and US.
Endura’s manufacturing, warehousing and design base in Scotland also has a footprint – mainly the electricity and natural gas used to power its 5,000 square meter facility in Livingston. The biggest reductions in emissions will come chiefly by switching to renewables, particularly for electricity, and this is something that is currently being pursued.
Cumulatively, the activities under the direct control of Endura represent around 74% of the total CO2 impact of their clothing. Consumer use – predominantly washing – contributes around 20% to a garment’s environmental impact and significant reductions can be made by influencing consumer behavior in washing and extending the product’s life span.
Endura estimates that retail activities contribute 3% of an item’s emissions, with end-of-life management adding a similar proportion. Endura views end of life management as their responsibility, but from a CO2 emissions point of view, it’s not the lowest hanging fruit. However, planning has started on an initiative to retrieve and fully recycle products alongside packaging such as LDPE bags, something that’s already in place as part of the European Outdoor Group’s Single Use Plastics project.
Whilst aggressively reducing CO2 emissions under their control is a key part of Endura’s future, the One Million Tree Initiative can reduce their net carbon footprint much more quickly. The mangrove restoration project in Mozambique was chosen as it offers particularly high levels of carbon sequestration per plant, but also because the project was ready to start planting immediately. Endura also plans to plant trees closer to home, next to the trails at its charitable trust center in central Scotland, where native woodlands are scheduled to start planting in 2021. This project will create a woodland of 85,000 broadleaf trees, capturing carbon and improving biodiversity on otherwise agriculturally unproductive land.
By pledging to plant one million trees per year over a ten-year timeframe, the carbon capture effect compounds as more and more trees are planted and then begin to reproduce naturally. This will see Endura first balance out the CO2 that their activities produce and rapidly move beyond this to remove much more carbon from the atmosphere than they emit. By 2030, Endura forecast that their net footprint will lock away more than 100,000 tonnes of atmospheric CO2 each and every year.
Comfy as f$ck, well thought out and hopefully durable!
My issue with Endura is a bit different. Their sizing seems to be a bit, how to put it, random. Sometimes M is too large. Sometimes L is too small...
And all my Endura stuff is like that, nice products but some details need improvement.
Hopefully they re-launch those, keeping the belt.
The original thermostat tights (before the fabric went a bit naff), those were also great, it took a big crash followed by being cut out of my clothes to destroy them.
I want to try the MT-500 helmet with the weird Smith-like honeycomb, but finding any large helmet at the moment is next to impossible...
We actually sell Endura at the shop I work at and we have only had one warranty claim, and that was only for a cosmetic defect on a jersey.
Carbon neutral or negative can not be archived. Only if you use human labour to its maximum extent and even then the humans need tools and they did have a carbon output. Still not possible to negate the carbon output. Tree's should be plantet way more often and the right one's on the right spot. But that doesn't mean your company produces less carbon or even 0.
Reduce what you produce, offset what you do.
Carbon is life. We cannot avoid it no matter what we do as you point out. Concepts of carbon neutrality or negativity are pretty well established in a general sense. We know what is meant by these terms.
We're just a bunch of complex animals doing stuff that are not necessary for our survival. Added bonus is that we further accelerate the rate of emissions by obliterating native forests in the process.
As you said, there is no such thing as carbon neutral. Atmospheric CO2 is released in one place and absorbed in another place. Unless you want to go back to living in caves and live on berries and roots, you can't be entirely carbon neutral.
I guess humanity is not willing to abandon their toys and monopoly. That leaves us with the next best option, which is to try to reduce emissions to a point that can be reasonably managed/expected (low-impact materials, more efficient transportation, use of renewable energies, shopping local, cutting out animal products, not driving to the trailhead etc ...), and offset the rest by one method or another (planting trees is the most practical solution at the moment, which has many benefits aside from CO2 absorption, one of them being employment for rural communities.)
Greenwashing is not giving a f*ck but marketing the lie that you do (ie. a huge green "Recyclable" label on plastic bottled water).
Carbon offsetting is about walking the talk and actually reducing emissions where you can AND planting trees to cancel out what you can't.
It is commonly agreed that this is what we mean by carbon neutrality and carbon negativity, and croaking that such a thing does not exist in a practical sense is hair splitting at best.
Even if you bury the trees, they're not as dense as the coal we dug up in the first places, and won't be for millions(?) of years.
Planting trees is pretty much all we have but.
Bottom line is planting trees will never be the answer. We need to stop deforestation ASAP and let massive amounts of deforested farmland go through the succession process back to a natural system. No human planted system will ever achieve the biomass of a natural forest system.
It cracks me up that governments all over the world can lock down people "to save lives" based on science when the science of what is going on with deforestation and loss of diversity has been observable for decades and we do nothing. Call it conspiracy theory or whatever you want - but you are lied to and will continue to be lied to.
I 100% guarantee that 10X more people have died as a result of climate change than Covid - but that stuff never really gets reported. It's the stuff like lack of food, adequate water supply, etc. Food sources become less healthy and weakened immune systems and poor health result and the deaths are directly linked to the health of the ecosystem.
99percentinvisible.org/episode/for-the-love-of-peat
Good work, team!
who is so arrogant to think 20-21 century weather #'s are the norm? Explain to me seashells on the desert floor? The climate has been changing since the creator spoke this magnificent ball into existence. Get smart or one day soon you'll have nowhere to ride or breathe.