Fashion Industry Context:
93% of fashion brands are not paying factory workers a living wage that covers their basic needs of food, water, shelter, and healthcare (Source: Clean Clothes Campaign, 2020). Experts estimate that less than 5% of people making clothing around the world receive a living wage, meaning 95% of producers in the fashion industry are being held in systemic poverty. And, 75% of them are women between the ages of 18 and 24 (Source: Fashion Revolution, 2017). This is especially troubling in light of the fact that “if brands absorbed this entire cost of paying living wages within their supply chains, for mere pennies per product, it would cost them, individually, less than 1 percent of the price of a garment–that’s 17 cents on a $25 shirt.” (Source: Bédat, 2021) This is not a small problem. In fact, the fashion industry employs nearly 100 Million factory workers around the world (that’s a higher number than the population of over 220 different countries) (Source: Fashion United, 2017). Factoring in that many workers have children, the number of people this problem affects quickly becomes as large as the population of the United States, the 3rd largest country in the world.

Our Approach:
We pay 100% living wages to every producer in our 1st Tier factories. To learn more about our wages than what’s shared here, read this post. Providing a living wage is the foundation for creating a healthy and equitable work environment. It establishes an ethos of social responsibility, and influences other decisions that uplift workers. In our experience, we always find that factories that pay a living wage are also best in class across the other criteria we assess.

We monitor individual living wages through 3rd party wage research from MIT, WageIndicator, and Trading Economics, and family living wages through benchmarks provided by the Global Living Wage Coalition in all of the countries we operate in. To ensure that 100% of our workers receive an individual living wage, we track suppliers’ lowest wages. If the lowest wage is at or above the living wage, everyone in that factory is receiving a salary deemed sufficient by these organizations to cover their basic needs. Since the cost of living is always changing, we’ve increased our lowest wages to meet revised living wages on three separate occasions across two different countries in the last 18 months alone.

While wages are internally assessed for our suppliers in Mexico, Brazil, and Kenya, the factory we own and operate in Peru has undergone an in-depth 3rd party audit from Accountable (see findings here) that verified its wages are individual living wages. Today, 100% of workers at our Tier 1 suppliers receive an individual living wage, but no supplier is providing a family living wage to the majority of its workers. It’s on our sustainability roadmap to work with suppliers to provide 100% family living wages in the future and to dive much deeper into Tiers 2-4 of our supply chain in pursuit of living wages as well.

Fashion Industry Context:
The fashion industry is responsible for one of the worst industrial accidents in the history of the world. The Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013 killed 1,134 garment workers in Bangladesh. From fires to further collapses, almost a decade later, the fashion industry continues to be a deadly business with insufficient regulation for health and safety. High demand, short lead times, and razor-thin margins produce unsafe working environments where high production is prioritized while adherence to maintaining building integrity and fire code is often neglected.

Our Approach:
We partner with factories that clearly prioritize the health & safety of their workers. All of our suppliers have established health & safety systems, policies, responsible team members, and 3rd party verification in place to cultivate a safe and healthy workplace. All have completed an independent health & safety audit, and most have recurring audits. Every worker is trained regularly on occupational emergency preparedness and provided with personal protective equipment (PPE) and access to clean water and facilities. Moreover, workers are consulted on health & safety risks and play a critical role in improving health & safety practices by regularly meeting and collaborating with management.

To learn more about each factory’s practices pertaining to Health & Safety, read the Behind The Scenes of Our Operations blog post.

Fashion Industry Context:
The fashion industry is flooded with human rights abuses including issues such as child and forced labor, long working hours, repression of freedom of association & bargaining, lack of job security, discrimination and violence, and little to no access to justice for those whose basic rights are violated at work. There are an estimated 152 million children between the ages of 5-17 years in child labor, half of whom are in hazardous work including Fashion’s supply chain (Source: ILO, 2017). The Walk Free Foundation (2018) produced a study based on data from 167 countries and interviews with 71,000 people in 52 languages and found that Fashion is one of the key industries contributing to modern slavery. According to Global Slavery Index, “clothing is at risk for directing the second-highest amount of money toward modern slavery, after tech.” (Source: Bédat, 2021)

Our Approach:
We champion work environments that uplift workers and their families by visiting our Tier 1 suppliers regularly and collaborating with HR teams to ensure they are elevating workers’ rights through maintaining ethical governance. We have NO child or forced labor in our supply chain, and all of our factories’ working hours are in compliance with national laws and the International Labour Organization. Every factory has systems established to eliminate and prevent discrimination, harassment, and abuse, and openly discloses rights to workers. All of our suppliers have policies, responsible team members, and 3rd party verification in place to guarantee workers’ rights are met. All suppliers allow for freedom of association and bargaining, and the majority of our suppliers have established career paths in place for workers to move their way up in the factory.

To learn more about each factory’s practices pertaining to Governance & Workers’ Rights, read the Behind The Scenes of Our Operations blog post.

Fashion Industry Context:
It’s estimated that up to 80% of the fashion’s industry’s 75 Million workers are women between the ages of 18 and 24. While the fashion industry has the potential to eradicate poverty for tens of millions of women around the world (in addition to their families), 95%+ of fashion workers are held in systemic poverty, oftentimes in unsafe and abusive work environments. Additionally, an estimated 68% of fast fashion brands don’t maintain gender equality at production facilities (Source: Ethical Fashion Guide, 2019), and one in every two women workers in garment factories in Southeast Asia has experienced sexual harassment, according to on-the-ground reports from CARE International (2019). The industry is far from where it needs to be when it comes to assessing and improving its impact on women and their family members. While the industry could function as a platform for helping women achieve their aspirations, women are often trapped in poverty and experience other forms of trauma.

Our Approach:
We believe it’s possible to pull women and their dependents out of poverty by providing a living wage and a healthy, safe, and equitable work environment. All of our factories have a system in place to eradicate and prevent gender-based harassment, discrimination, and abuse. Health and safety precautions are taken for all women in the workplace, especially for those who are pregnant or nursing. Women and men are paid equally and given the same opportunities for promotions, and all of our factories’ leadership teams have women who represent, or in some cases exceed, 25% of management.

Our suppliers actively employ and empower women—in a leather footwear industry that primarily employs men, our partners provide job opportunities for women and train them to work in positions that are traditionally held by men. Most of our factories offer free health clinics to women and some provide a monthly stipend to all women with dependents.

To learn more about each factory’s practices pertaining to Gender Equality & Empowerment, read the Behind The Scenes of Our Operations blog post.

Fashion Industry Context:
In an industry notorious for a classic “race to the bottom” where brands continuously shift production to countries with the lowest requirements for minimum wages, it’s not surprising that meaningful healthcare and benefits for workers are far from commonplace. In fact, the industry is so off course on this that when we assessed 31 of the top standards, assessments, and ratings systems pertaining to social and environmental impact as part of our research for building our Sustainability Facts Label, we found that none evaluate healthcare and benefits beyond a handful that assess only what’s required by law. Considering that much of the world’s clothing comes from either fast fashion brands or manufacturers in the informal economic sector in developing countries and emerging markets that have very few legal regulations, it’s fair to assume that the reason so little research exists on healthcare and benefits is because for the most part, they’re largely nonexistent.

Our Approach:
Living wages, access to healthcare, and generous benefits play a critical role in creating positive, cross-generational impact. All of our factories, at a minimum, provide benefits such as healthcare, paid time off, social security contributions (or equivalent), and financial bonuses. Additionally, most of our factories offer professional development training, opportunities for continued education, physical and mental health programming, and financial literacy resources. Providing benefits like these is why we believe we consistently see anonymous employee satisfaction rates of 90%+ in the factory we own and operate in Peru.

Within our supply chain, 75% of our factories provide opportunities for continued education such as hosting in-factory classes to help employees complete their secondary education and partnering with universities to provide discounts for those who want to pursue a college degree. Physical and mental health benefits are also provided at the majority of our factories. Some of our suppliers offer medical health training and clinics and even employ a doctor who works onsite. 50% of our suppliers offer training on topics ranging from nutrition and physical fitness to soft skills like stress management, conflict management, and how to practice healthy relationships. Half of our factories provide financial literacy training on how to budget and save, in addition to facilitating in-factory savings groups. Some of our suppliers go so far as to provide salary advances for family emergencies or other special circumstances. And, a few have funds set aside specifically to address needs through natural disasters and unforeseen macroeconomic challenges.

Benefits like these set our suppliers apart through the COVID-19 pandemic—as major brands around the world moved away from their workers by not even paying for purchase orders that had already been produced (leading to mass unemployment and accounts of hunger), we supported our suppliers in moving toward the workers within our supply chain through initiatives like the relief fund established in our factory in Peru.

Fashion Industry Context:
For centuries now, the fashion industry has exacerbated racial injustice: many of the raw materials that make up the clothes we wear such as cotton, silk, indigo, etc. have historically been interconnected with slavery and slavery remains a prevalent issue within the fashion industry today (Source: Barber, 2021; ILO, 2016). Fast fashion’s race to produce the most clothes possible from the cheapest sources possible is holding tens of millions of people in poverty, the vast majority of whom are young BIPOC women subject to unsafe and abusive work environments. The fashion industry’s immense waste from the Global North is notorious for polluting the Global South, having a direct impact primarily on BIPOC communities (Source: The Or Foundation, 2021). A lack of BIPOC diversity in representation within every level of fashion companies, much less advertising at-large, has resulted in an ongoing power imbalance where BIPOC voices continue to be marginalized despite the fact that BIPOC communities are most affected by the negative impact of the fashion industry (Source: Barber, 2021).

Our Approach:
We have an opportunity to contribute toward progress within racial justice in the fashion industry by pursuing antiracism as an organization. We are focused on six primary areas of action:
Team Learning – We believe that one of the most powerful tools of antiracism is education and learning. We are open in sharing our individual pursuits of antiracism in an appropriate way, reflecting and learning individually and as a team as we move toward greater awareness of biases and work to break down barriers.
Internal Process & Management – We strive to adhere to internal systems and processes that empower antiracist initiatives throughout the organization.
Recruitment – We seek to hire a diverse community of employees, with BIPOC representation throughout the organization.
Partnering with BIPOC Owned Businesses – We seek to identify, connect with, uplift, and partner with BIPOC owned businesses who offer excellent products and services.
Community Involvement – We seek to strengthen relationships and greater justice for the BIPOC communities in the locations where we operate.
Branded Content – We intend to strengthen and continue demonstrating a racially diverse community to our customers through our branded content.

Fashion Industry Context:
Creating 1.2 billion tons of annual greenhouse gas emissions and on pace to account for 26% of emissions by 2050, the fashion industry is one of the worst contributors to climate change, creating more emissions than the international aviation and maritime shipping industries combined (Source: Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2017). Brands are starting to monitor their carbon emissions due to pressure from consumers and other advocate groups. Still though, a significant amount of the industry has taken no action, which is concerning in light of the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change making the scientific case that we must decarbonize entire industries far more rapidly if we are going to meet the 1.5 degree global warming threshold.

Our Approach:
Everything we make has an impact on the planet, which is why we measure, strive to reduce, and ensure we offset 100% of our carbon emissions. Since 2018, we have offset the carbon emissions of everything we have produced by partnering with Ecosphere+ to invest in forest conservation in the Peruvian Amazon. Our program focuses on keeping the threatened forests of the Amazon alive and protected while creating sustainable livelihood opportunities for its indigenous communities. As a Climate Neutral Certified brand, our carbon footprint is verified annually by a 3rd party, and we offset 100% of our emissions through verified conservation work. Additionally, we recently began measuring our emissions at the product level through Doconomy’s 2030 Calculator so that we can scale our reduction efforts. Moreover, we publicly share the carbon footprint of every Nisolo branded footwear and accessory item on our product pages as best we can so that consumers have visibility into the carbon footprint of the specific products they are purchasing.

To learn more about our carbon footprint and conservation work, feel free to explore this post.

Fashion Industry Context:As much as 90% of a product’s environmental impact is determined during the design stage when raw materials are determined. Sadly, most of the raw materials for the clothes we wear are derived from oil and fossil fuels—63% of textile fibers are derived from petrochemicals that take centuries to degrade in landfills (Source: Journal of Cleaner Production, 2018). “Nearly 70 million barrels of oil are used each year to make the world’s polyester fiber, which is now the most commonly used fiber in our clothing. But it takes more than 200 years to decompose” (Forbes, 2015). These low quality materials make our clothes less durable and unfortunately more disposable.The fashion industry is operating under a linear “take, make, and dispose” model that’s having a detrimental and oftentimes irreversible impact. A significant amount of the raw materials that make up our clothing originate from our natural environment, and the fashion industry is responsible for changing the physical landscape of our planet for the worse. Fashion is projected to use 35% more land for fiber and textile production by 2030—an extra 115 million hectares that could be left to preserve biodiversity (Source: Global Fashion Agenda, 2017).

Our Approach:We strive to design and manufacture with raw materials that are timeless, durable, easy to care for and easy on the environment. We do not use any oil-based materials or synthetics like polyester in our primary raw materials and are committed to never using plastic or fossil fuel based materials unless they are 100% recycled and recyclable at the end of their life. We actively look for ways to upcycle waste into new products across our line. We are beginning to work with recycled PET (RPET) by upcycling post-consumer recycled water bottles into knit materials for sneakers and other products. We’re also innovating with a sugar-based EVA foam for outsoles and various forms of Green EVA for insoles as well. Additionally, the artisans in Kenya who manufacture our jewelry upcycle brass and other metal waste into new products across our jewelry line. We are committed to ensuring the Five Freedoms of animal welfare are met within our supply chain. We have a strict commitment to never use exotic skins (e.g., ostrich, crocodile, kangaroo, elephant, lizard, snake, etc.), or fur for our products due to the historic animal rights abuses of these industries.One of our company’s core values is to “continuously improve.” It’s a mindset that affects our decision-making at every level of the business. Naturally, we applied this to our use of leather as a primary raw material, and a few years ago, this led to one of the most expensive external consulting projects we’ve ever done. The objective of the project was to assess every raw material option for our products in order to find better options than conventional leather. Our expert consultants scoured suppliers and innovators from all over the world, but we were disheartened by the global market’s offering of leather alternatives. We found that most alternative materials marketed as “sustainable” still had significantly negative environmental impacts. While they appeared to be “plant-based” or “green” at face value, when we dug deeper, we found that a large percentage of the materials were made with virgin plastic. It turned out that a lot of “vegan” options were just sophisticated greenwashing. Alternatives that met our product aesthetic did not hold up from a durability perspective. We explored options like pineapple and cactus leather, plus a variety of other natural options, but none of them held up like conventional leather, which means they ultimately ran the risk of creating more waste and environmental impact. Next-generation leathers (e.g., mushroom leather, lab-grown leather, etc.) either didn’t work well for footwear or had a pay-to-play model. For instance, it would have cost us $1M to get a viable run of mushroom leather or buy into some of the lab grown options in the works. As a small, under-resourced brand, we do not have the capital to work with these materials at scale. That said, we continue to evaluate new options, and we hope next-generation leathers will be more accessible in the future.Today, much of our product offering is made with leather as a raw material. When used irresponsibly, leather can be harmful to the environment. After a decade trying to understand leather on a more holistic level and evaluating alternatives, we’ve come to embrace leather as one of the more sustainable options available for high-quality, durable footwear and accessories when made and processed responsibly. We consider the leather we work with an economic by-product of the meat industry, as we divert hides from immediately ending up in landfills by responsibly manufacturing them into shoes and accessories.To learn more about our holistic approach to raw materials evaluation as well as how we are using leather in a sustainable manner, see morehere.

Fashion Industry Context:The fashion industry relies heavily on natural resources and hazardous chemicals to manufacture its products. “Freshwater is a highly limited commodity and its supply is diminishing. A full two thirds of the world’s population are projected to face water scarcity by 2025, according to the UN. This is not because water molecules are disappearing; it’s because existing freshwater is getting polluted, rendering it unsafe for human consumption, and the chemicals from our clothing contribute to this water crisis.” (Source: Bédat, 2021) As much as 20% of industrial water pollution comes from washing, solvents, and dyes (Source: Mckinsey, 2020), and if the water and chemical waste from making our clothes isn’t treated, it will run off into natural waterways and create serious health problems for nearby communities and the planet at large (Source: The True Cost, 2015). Additionally, microplastics from our clothing are winding up in rivers and oceans that pollute marine ecosystems at alarming rates—fashion accounts for 20 to 35 percent of microplastic flows into the ocean (Source: Mckinsey, 2020). Even if factories comply with local legislation for managing chemicals, water usage, and energy, the fashion industry is still largely unregulated, especially in the deeper tiers of the supply chain.

Our Approach:We personally visit and vet all of our 1st and 2nd tier suppliers to ensure they have systems in place to monitor and improve chemical management, water use & wastewater treatment, energy consumption, and waste generation & recycling. We are aLeather Working Groupmember and 95% of our leathers are Leather Working Group Certified, which means they have been evaluated and certified for best practices against the following criteria: material traceability, environmental management system, restricted substances, energy consumption, water usage, air and noise emissions, waste management, effluent treatment, health, safety, and emergency preparedness, chemical management, and operations management. 100% of our leathers will be LWG Certified within the next 24 months, at most.A significant share of our supply chain is powered by renewable energy. We installed solar panels on the roof of our factory in Peru, which generate power for the facility. And one of our factory partners in Mexico is installing solar energy alternatives with our support later this year.To learn more about our manufacturing facilities as well as how we ensure our leathers are processed responsibly, see thispostand thispost.

Fashion Industry Context:Packaging for the clothes and shoes we wear is often composed of single-use plastics and materials that immediately wind up in landfills. Shipping emissions to us as customers also contribute significantly to Fashion’s carbon footprint. “The fashion industry has long been dependent on plastic for wrapping, hanging, tagging and shipping…in just the U.S. alone, 380 billion plastic bags and wraps are used each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Many of these single-use plastics are not recycled or disposed of properly” (Source: Triple Pundit, 2021). Much of the fashion industry is transitioning towards more environmentally responsible packaging, but the volume of packaging and high concentration of plastic is still a significant concern.

Our Approach:We are committed to improving packaging materials, recyclability, and reducing shipping emissions. We measure and strive to offset 100% of our upstream (factory to distribution center) and downstream (distribution center to customer) shipping, and have achieved reductions in shipping emissions by relying more heavily on ocean and ground shipments vs. air over the last few years. The majority of our packaging is made from recycled corrugated cardboard and is fully recyclable. Additionally, we are in the process of overhauling our packaging to make it even more environmentally responsible. And, we plan to reduce packaging materials and impacts in half by using a single box instead of double boxing our products for the majority of our products by the end of 2022 forward.

Fashion Industry Context:With the rise of fast fashion in the 1990s, our clothes became cheaper and more disposable than ever before. The vast majority of clothing is made from virgin raw materials under a linear “take, make, dispose” model. American shoppers are buying five times more now than they did in 1980, which averages out to 68 garments per year (Source: Rent The Runway, 2018). Each piece is only worn a handful of times before it gets tossed, and estimates range from three to seven wears in total, on average. This increased consumption correlates with increased fashion waste—between 1999 to 2009 post consumer textile waste grew by 40% (Source: Environmental Protection Agency, 2009). Rubber, leather, and textiles make up more than 9% of municipal solid waste in the United States, and the average American throws out 81 pounds of clothing every year (Source: Environmental Protection Agency, 2016). Perhaps the worst part all of this is that 95% of our clothing and shoes can be recycled or reused, yet 85% ends up in landfills and can take decades (sometimes even centuries) to biodegrade (Source: Council for Textile Recycling, 2021).

Our Approach:We embrace Circularity as a brand and strive to take environmental impact into account at all stages ranging from initial design, to the sourcing of materials, to manufacturing, to logistics to the final customer, to the end lifecycle of products post consumer use, and all steps in between. We give new life to what was once considered waste and are striving to use more post-consumer recycled PET (RPET) on products where possible in addition to continuing to upcycle brass and scrap metal into jewelry.Our intention is to keep our products in use as long as possible, which is why we focus on providing leather cleaning kits and products that better care for our goods in addition to educating our customers on how to maintain our products. We resell flawed and damaged products we receive back from customers or from our suppliers at a discounted rate to ensure that everything we produce gets utilized. And, we are in the process of determining a Resale platform and Repair strategy that will accelerate and scale our ability to better care and extend the life cycle of used and worn out products.At the end of the product life, we encourage customers to recycle and dispose of their products responsibly throughour takeback program with Soles4Souls(S4S). Since launching this program, we have collected and diverted over 7,000 pairs of used shoes from landfills. Soles4Souls’ programs are distinct from typical distribution schemes that wind up polluting the Global South, and 0% of donated products go straight to landfills or incinerators.Learn more about our takeback programhere.

From megabytes to miles per gallon, we know a lot about the products we buy, but almost nothing about the hundreds of hands they touch or thousands of miles they travel before they get to us. To empower consumers to make better choices and hold ourselves more accountable in hopes the industry will begin to do the same, we built the most comprehensive yet digestible evaluation tool the fashion industry has seen to date, the Sustainability Facts Label. All Nisolo footwear and accessories ship with this product-specific label, evaluating sustainability impact scored by 10 categories across People and Planet. Backed by 200 different public-facing data points, each product and label include a QR code that link directly to the full evaluation. Through open sourcing our label and methodology, we envision the adoption of this level of transparency across the industry.

To learn more about this transparency initiative, visit our Sustainability Facts Label landing page and methodology.

No wage is more telling than the lowest wage, and if a brand can demonstrate that its lowest wage is a living wage, then they can demonstrate that all of its workers are receiving what they need to cover their basic needs. For the past several years now, we’ve publicly shared our lowest wages from across our supply chain and compared them to location specific living wages in an effort to inspire a living wage movement across the fashion industry, where it's estimated that less than 5% of workers currently receive a living wage that covers their most basic needs.

To learn more about our wages, and the Lowest Wage Challenge we launched to the industry, visit this page.

Whereas most brands would never disclose their carbon emissions, we publicly share our total estimated carbon footprint annually as a Climate Neutral Certified brand. And, we share the estimated carbon emissions of all Nisolo footwear and accessories accessible via their respective product landing pages.

To learn about the methodology behind each of these, visit our Climate Neutral and Sustainability Facts Label Methodology pages.

We can only improve what we measure, and oftentimes, 3rd party certifications are too expensive or inefficient to assess what really matters when it comes to rapidly advancing social and environmental responsibility. This is why the first step in driving greater accountability is self assessing and publicly sharing social and environmental impact.

Since 2014, we’ve measured our social impact across our supply chain in order to create an environment where our producers and their dependents thrive. We track and publicly share lowest wages and living wages with all of our suppliers, publicly measure, strive to reduce, and ensure we offset 100% of carbon emissions, and we publicly disclose 200 social and environmental data points across all of our products through the Sustainability Facts Label. We do this because we believe our stakeholders have the right to know the impacts of our products and practices.

To demonstrate the power of public-facing self assessment, publishing our lowest wages and comparing them to our commitment of pursuing living wages has led us to increasing our lowest wages to ensure they meet ever-evolving ‘living wages’ in two different countries in the last 18 months alone.

Nisolo As Re/Make’s #1 Rated Brand for Transparency

Remake is an independent nonprofit with over 1,000 ambassadors around the globe on a mission to change the industry’s harmful practices on people and the planet. They make sustainability accessible and inclusive across three pillars of their work: education, advocacy, and transparency. Remake’s latest Accountability Report ranks Nisolo as the #1 performing brand of 60 total brands surveyed across the following impact areas: Traceability, Wages and Wellbeing, Commercial Practices, Raw Materials, Environmental Justice & Climate Change, and Governance, Diversity, & Inclusion.

Nisolo scored an 83/150 on their assessment. The closest brand to this score was Eileen Fisher with a 56, and other noteworthy brands included Reformation (47), Patagonia (27), Levi’s (20), Allbirds (15), J. Crew (6), GAP (6), Forever 21 (-13) and many more.

View the report to learn more.

B Corp Certification is one of, if not the most rigorous and holistic 3rd party verification for brands in existence today. Certified B Corporations meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. Focusing on using business as a force for good, B Corps embrace a new way of doing business that envisions a more inclusive, equitable, and regenerative planet and economy.

The median score for the B Impact Assessment among 50,000+ past applicants is a 50.9, an 80 is a passing score, and the average for Certified B Corporations is a 93.8. Nisolo most recently scored a 115.4. While the vast majority of fashion brands would never be able to become B Corp Certified because of their poor social and environmental practices, there are around 120 fashion brands who have achieved this feat. The 115.4 Nisolo received for our social, environmental, and governance practices ranks higher than 93% of fashion brands that have become Certified B Corps, placing us at #1 among leather good brands and #3 among all footwear brands at the time of this post.

As a Certified B Corporation, our executive team is required to evaluate each decisions’ impact on people and the planet. To ensure accountability, we’ve written this into Nisolo’s legal operating agreement and by-laws, which our executive team is required to comply with in order to remain in good and compensated standing with the company.

To read more about our 3rd Party B Corporation Certification, visit here.

Climate Neutral ensures that we are accurately measuring and offsetting our carbon footprint by requiring us to measure our emissions on their software tool, the Brand Emissions Estimator (BEE), a comprehensive platform built in partnership with climate experts from well respected organizations—Massachusetts Institute of Technology and CIRAIG, among others—operating in the carbon emissions accounting and lifecycle analysis fields. 100% of our carbon offsets are made through a REDD+ conservation project in the Peruvian Amazon that is certified by the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS).

To read more about our 3rd Party Climate Neutral Certification, visit here.

As a brand, we are a Leather Working Group (LWG) member, and 95% of our leather uppers are derived from tanneries that are Leather Working Group Certified. When it comes to leather tanning, we rely on 3rd party certification from LWG to ensure our suppliers are responsibly processing the hides we use for our products. LWG assesses material traceability, environmental management system, restricted substances, energy consumption, water usage, air and noise emissions, waste management, effluent treatment, health, safety, and emergency preparedness, chemical management, and operations management, among other topics.

To read more about Leather Working Group Certification, visit here.

Real Leaders is an independent business community of impact leaders with a vision for a future where every generation leaves the world better than they found it. In both 2020 and 2021, they recognized Nisolo as a top 100 Impact Company in their annual ranking of positive impact companies around the world using the following formula to evaluate recipients:

A Company’s Force for Good Score = 3 Year Growth Rate (Acceleration) x Revenue (Mass) x B Impact Assessment Score

Legislation and activism play a critical role in solving the challenges the fashion industry faces today. While this is an area we want to grow more in, we’ve participated as ‘activists’ well beyond what a typical fashion brand would on several occasions.

We created our Sustainability Facts Label in a manner that was specifically built to be replicated by other brands within our industry (and beyond), and we remain in conversations with other brands seeking to adopt the principles of our label for their own supply chains. We also founded The Lowest Wage Challenge in collaboration with ABLE, a close competitor, to challenge brands to share their lowest wages and strive toward paying their workers a living wage throughout their supply chains. Our Sustainability Lead is an ambassador for Remake, a community of fashion lovers, womens’ rights advocates, and environmentalists on a mission to change the industry’s harmful practices on people and our planet.

We strive to champion legislation that protects garment workers and the planet and were one of a handful of brands that advocated for the passage of California State Bill 62, which put an end to harmful piece rate wages in order to ensure that every worker receives minimum wage.

Since inception 10+ years ago, we’ve provided countless resources to students and academics and have consistently provided uncompensated consulting to individuals, organizations, and companies interested in learning more about how to become more socially and environmentally responsible.

Additionally, we are members of Climate Neutral’s Brand Advisory Group with representatives from Allbirds, REI, Reformation, Cotopaxi, Mate the Label, Avocado Mattress, Peak Designs, Blueland, and Klean Kanteen. The purpose of this group is to support Climate Neutral to engage with key brand stakeholders to better understand their operations and climate strategies so that they can build a certification experience that empowers companies to decarbonize more rapidly We are also members of Soles4Souls’ Sustainability Council, with the primary purpose and focus of scaling socially and environmentally responsible product reclamation efforts across the footwear industry.

Supporting Sustainable Brands & Changemakers

Supporting like-minded brands and changemakers is a critical part of building a healthy and thriving ecosystem. This is why we support sustainably-minded brands in our industry through initiatives like brand collaborations, giveaways, etc. as well as through our Ethical Marketplace, which we built specifically to promote other brands who were handpicked for their exceptional products and willingness to sign on to our Code of Conduct. Additionally, we champion the work of changemakers in our industry through actively participating in forums, speaking events, and podcasts such as The Root Podcast, Conscious Style, Conscious Chatter, The Sustainable Fashion Forum, etc.

If we’re not willing to share what we’re learning as an industry, then we all have to unnecessarily reinvent the wheel and learn things the hard way. Whether it’s through being transparent on stageor through sharing specific methodology we’ve built out like this and this, we strive to maintain a spirit of open-sourcing relevant intellectual property whenever possible.