@Icebug
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Climate Love
Climate Review Score ranking:
Icebug
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We are proud supporters of Protect Our Winters, an organization originally founded by winter athletes who saw the direct effects of climate change: snow is disappearing. It will take a lot of good political decisions to stop climate change and Protect Our Winters work hard to keep climate on the agenda. They take politicians to the mountains, meet decision-makers in Brussels and give input to EU consultations on legislation. With the EU election coming up we really value their efforts. Find out more about Protect Our Winters here: https://protectourwinters.eu/ https://protectourwinters.eu/
Icebug
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This month we highlight some of the organizations we support through 1% for the Planet. First out is Hej främling - a great team that we've decided to help taking their good work to Gothenburg. Hej Främling started as a ski school for refugees in the north of Sweden. 10 years later, the organization is active in 50 places around Sweden and offers outdoor and culture activities where it’s needed the most. We love their easygoing yet effective approach and the fact that it has measurable effect on health and inclusion. 🙌 The money that we support Hej Främling with have been used to invite more people to their “Ut & Njut” activities. The picture is from when they took part in Icebug West Coast Trail last year.
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Great work. Keep it up! That 1% for the planet sounds to be a great initiative.
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Amazing 💚
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amazing
Icebug
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Do this at work? Why not! Today at 11 o’clock it’s time for our mandatory wellness hour again which means everything from walking to kayaking (as Jerome in the picture). The other week we were featured in another great article on our work culture. This time in Partille Tidning. To us it is crystal clear that both coworkers and the company benefit from spending time outdoors and shutting down usual tasks for a while. According to our staff survey it makes us productive and helps us get better work-life balance. So why is this still so unusual? Three advice to business leaders who want to try this: 1. Schedule the wellness hours so that no meetings are booked at these times. 2. Let people do what they want and feel good about. It's not about performance. 3. Make sure that everyone is part of it – this includes you! Find out more here: https://icebug.com/explore-icebug/wellness-time-at-icebug
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I have heard about this and I think this is a great initiative as long as there are alternatives for all types of bodies and adapted to people with different disabilities :)
Icebug
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We're a B Corp - but why should you care? Almost two years ago, we accomplished something really awesome: we became a certified B Corp. Achieving this required a rigorous exam of our operations, sustainability efforts and business model. But why is this important to you? Many companies' main purpose is to make money for their shareholders. At Icebug we don't buy into that. And there are other companies in the world that don't either. To become a B Corp, a company must pass a rigorous examination of operations, a sustainability assessment, and including a higher purpose in their company by-laws beyond just making money. In our case, our owners clearly state in writing that Nature and Society come before their own profit interest. This also works as a foundation for all the work we do, every day. Our Owners' directives: https://icebug.com/explore-icebug/owner-s-directives There are B Corps in most industries – like Ben & Jerry's in ice cream, Tony's Chocolonely in chocolate, and Patagonia in outdoor clothing. Next time you see the B logo: please take an extra look, because it actually means something. Interested in becoming a B Corp? Reach out! Find a B Corp to buy from, work with, or learn more about Certified B Corporations around the world: https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/find-a-b-corp/
Icebug
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It's B Corp month! Icebug is part of B Lab – a global network of companies that care more about the world than filling their own pockets. The movement includes some of the world’s most respected makers of everything from ice cream to outdoor gear – and even financial services. And with “respected” we mean respected for their efforts in social and environmental issues. The B in B Corps means that we want to Benefit the world. The B also means that we are committed to accountability, transparency, and continuous improvement. We are not perfect – but we are on a journey doing our best to bring value to the world and help improve things where we can! This March we’ll share posts on the B Corp movement and how we try to end "business as usual" together with our friends throughout the world. For more info, visit https://www.bcorpmonth.com/ https://www.bcorpmonth.com/
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Absolutely love that Icebug is a B Corp using business as a force for good! This is exactly what we need.
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You are a role model in transparency and responsible business, looking forward to learning more about B-Corps!
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Let's bring transparency and accountability to the fashion and footwear industry 💪
Icebug
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WHY TRANSPARENCY IS IMPORTANT. People need to make more conscious choices. But, to do that, they also need to know what they're choosing between. And this is only possible if companies become transparent. In spring 2021, Icebug launched the transparency project Follow the Footprints, where we opened our entire supply chain. By scanning a QR code on the shoe box or the tongue of each shoe, our customers – or competitors – can see all important sustainability indicators and the entire manufacturing chain for that product. We are saying YES to transparency and hope that other shoe brands will follow in the near future. Read more on this and our other promises at https://icebug.com/ourpromise
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Transparency intl. should look into exposing pollution too.
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Yes, it's hard to make the right choice when the information is not available, hard to reach or unclear 🤔
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Your transparency and honesty are two of your most admirable properties. Keep it up!
Icebug
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WHY WE NEED TO PRESERVE THE FOREST. More than half of all endangered species in Sweden are directly linked to old-growth forests that have not been significantly affected by forestry. However, only a tiny percent of Sweden's old-growth forests are protected. This is why we are saying NO to cutting down old-growth forests. We are teaming up with the Swedish NGO Naturarvet and have donated all our webshop sales during Black Friday to them. Read more on this and our other promises at https://icebug.com/ourpromise
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This is a great move, we need to protect the few old-growth forests left 🌳
Icebug
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WHY SHOES SHOULDN'T FLY. Did you know that air freight causes over 20 times more CO2 emissions than sea freight? For a pair of shoes, the CO2 emissions would double. This is why we're saying NO to air freight. We haven't flown shoes from our factories for the last five years – and the planet craves that our competitors immediately start to do the same. Read more on this and our other promises at https://icebug.com/ourpromise
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Air freight = worst freight
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The commitment to halve your emissions by 2030 is achievable going by the sheer effort,ideal strategies and various fine aspects you have strived to put in place.💚
Icebug
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One way to save resources is to use existing materials rather than produce new ones. We have previously released the shoe Eide with wool scraps from Swedish Woolpower, and now we launch Reuse v1. A shoe made with denim leftovers from amazing Nudie Jeans. Does your brand get leftovers or scraps that you think would make a great shoe in our hands? Get in touch! Read more about Icebug Reuse: https://icebug.com/reuse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUIpJqp_kW4
Johannes Luiga
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Traveling on the train between Stockholm and Gothenburg and seeing this nice advertisement for a shoe partly produced by recycled material and with the lowest CO2 footprint in the industry💚 Really encouraging to see that you are partners with We Don’t Have Time as well😊 https://icebug.com/
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Pinned by We Don't Have Time
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Thanks for the shout-out and the discussion here. We don't see ourselves as part of the fashion industry - in our view there's something inherently unsustainable in a business model which relies on creating needs. Don't buy a product you don't need. We try to build our products on a basis of functionality and performance, making footwear for people that wants to get outdoors every day, while minimizing the footprint and adding the element of style - looks that will last for a long time. If we succeed... Well, that's not really for us to tell you, but we promise that we don't make them ugly on purpose :) When it comes to the price, you have to pay a certain "climate premium". Firstly, because choosing materials and process with a lower footprint is more expensive (absurdly enough, higher footprint options is still the standard) and secondly because we have incorporated an internal pricing on CO2 at €100/ton. Moving early into a World where carbon is properly priced. This we use for our giving through 1% For the Planet and investing in renewable energy.
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It's great seeing Egypt such industries adopt the 3Rs model
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What a nice way of promoting circular economy keep up .
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love it!
Icebug
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There will be a lot of talk about sustainability this year. Some of it will be relevant, a lot of it will be marketing spin. A true commitment requires taking all aspects of what you do (or don’t do) into account and what impact that creates. (Resources you use, the pollution you cause, how people in your supply chain are treated, your influence on your customers, what causes you support, where you’re paying your taxes.) Icebug’s vision is to be a changemaker towards a society where people can thrive on a planet in balance. Our New Year’s resolution is that this isn’t only something nice-sounding that amounts to nothing. It is our work. Every day. We promise to: Act on our best knowledge. Strive for maximum impact. Focus on what we’re uniquely positioned to do, with one foot in the outdoor industry and one foot in the footwear industry. This is not about being perfect but about being ethical. Taking our responsibility by doing the right thing when we know what the right thing is. When there is a conflict, we will prioritize what’s best for the World even over what’s best for Icebug. This is the change that we want to see for all businesses. Expect us to keep paying taxes where we’re doing business, instead of where the taxes are lowest, expect us to keep giving 1% of total sales to environmental non-profits, expect us to keep making products that people really need while minimizing resource use and not exploiting people in the supply chain, expect us to keep cutting our emissions to reach at least 50% reduction latest by 2030, expect us to use our platform to amplify our impact by sharing what we’ve learnt and speaking up when we see greenwashing or greendogding. And do expect us to be transparent. You’re invited to hold us accountable. The transformation to a sustainable future is a team sport. We find great hope in knowing that we have many more team members out there, most of which we don’t know. Join team one planet for a happy new year this year and many more years to come.
Icebug
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1% for the Planet: Protecting forest and more To get the planet in balance, two things are needed: Decreasing resource use and pollution while maintaining or restoring the regenerative capacity. This is what our 1% for the Planet giving focuses on. Taxing ourselves by committing one percent of our total sales – regardless of whether we're making a profit or not – is probably our strongest way of showing that we're not just minding our own business. Our first year as members ended on the last of February of 2021, and this meant total donations of 199 411 USD. The largest ones were: Climate advocacy through Protect our Winters (50 000 USD), protecting forest through Naturarvet (44 531 USD) and co-financing a pilot project to install solar rooftop to replace fossil-based electricity at factories in Vietnam through IDH (35 000 USD). There will be a lot of talk about sustainability this year. Some of it will be relevant, a lot of it will be marketing spin. Yesterday we talked about our commitment to decrease our carbon footprint, and at midnight we're making our New Year's resolution! As a build-up to our New Year's resolution, we're talking about a couple of things we're doing already.
Icebug
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Our carbon footprint: Reducing all we can and compensating for what's left To have a chance to stay within 1,5 degrees of global warming over time, we must halve total emissions by 2030. On an average per style carbon footprint, Icebug is starting at 11,9 kg CO2e. We want to lead and commit to doing our utmost to reach below 6 kg CO2e as soon as we can, and latest, by the end of this decade. That's within our own supply chain. Lowering the emissions that we cause is our first responsibility. But, for the foreseeable future, we will continue to cause emissions. To compensate and help with the transition to a low carbon future, we also support others outside our business to lower their emission. This is like walking in the forest. First, you avoid littering yourself, but if you find some trash, it's better to pick that up too. We compensate 200% of the footprint through partners and projects that meet high standards, such as Gold Standard, CDM and 1% for the Planet. Our total footprint for 20/21 was 2955 tCO2e, and total compensation was 5910 tCO2e. The biggest project that we supported was solar cookers replacing coal in rural parts of the Henan province in China. In addition to eliminating CO2 emissions, this project also positively affects several others Sustainable Development goals such as decreasing poverty, creating jobs, giving access to clean energy, and improving health for the villagers. There will be a lot of talk about sustainability this year. Some of it will be relevant, a lot of it will be marketing spin. As a build-up to our New Year's resolution, we'll talk about a couple of things we're doing already. Yesterday we talked about radical transparency regarding product footprint. Tomorrow we'll talk about one percent for the Planet.
Icebug
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Full disclosure on product footprint Spring 2021, we launched "Follow the Footprints", offering radical transparency into the key sustainability indicators and the supply chain journey for each product, making it easily accessible for the end-users through our website or in-store by scanning a QR code. The key sustainability indicators show carbon emissions caused and weight-based percentage of recycled and biobased materials, which are essential to show progress in phasing out oil as a raw material. Follow the Footprints has a dual purpose. Apart from making it possible for customers to make more conscious choices, also to share our learnings with the rest of the footwear industry. Kudos to our colleagues at Allbirds who are also pioneering this – they even beat us to it! In general, product footprint is, unfortunately, a black box in the footwear industry. Sharing it has great potential to speed up sustainable transformation. We also advocate disclosing the totals and not hiding that behind heavily marketed small volume special projects or cherry-picking certain sustainability activities – a sustainability win needs to be measured by actual impact, replicability and how it can scale. Icebug's 2021 average CO2 footprint per functional unit (the average of all the shoes that we produced) was 11,9 kg CO2e. We think it's at the forefront of performance footwear based on all the work done over several years to switch to materials and processes that have a lower impact. But we would sure like to know and learn more from other brands in the upcoming year. There will be a lot of talk about sustainability this year. Some of it will be relevant, a lot of it will be marketing spin. As a build-up to our New Year's resolution, we'll talk about a couple of things we're doing already. Yesterday we talked about putting a proper price on carbon. Tomorrow we'll talk about our emission reduction target and compensating for our carbon footprint.
Icebug
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Putting a proper price on carbon What we mean by a "proper price" is a price that will trigger the transformation away from fossil energy to renewable. Even though we can see that solar rooftop on factories in the supply chain already has a very good return on investment, the inertia of business as usual is strong. It's happening too slow. The "proper price" suggested by leading climate scientists is €100/tonnes CO2. To follow what we believe to be right for the whole World ourselves, we have integrated this price on carbon in our internal calculations. We're building climate considerations into the business model. The practical implication of this has been that materials and processes with a higher CO2 value are getting phased down in our product portfolio. There will be a lot of talk about sustainability this year. Some of it will be relevant, a lot of it will be marketing spin. As a build-up to our New Year's resolution, we'll talk about a couple of things we're doing already. Yesterday we talked about not using air freight. Tomorrow we'll talk about radical transparency in sharing product footprint information.
Icebug
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No inbound airfreight Changing from sea freight to air freight is common in our industry to catch the sales season when there are delivery delays. Icebug hasn't used any inbound air freight for the past five years, and we stuck to it even this year when Covid lockdowns in Vietnam led to massive delays for about a third of our fall/winter production. Does it make a difference? Using sea freight from Vietnam to Europe or North America only causes about half a kilo CO2e emissions/pair (less than bringing it on a truck from southern Europe or Mexico to our warehouses), but when you switch to air freight, the emission per pair increases at least 20 times! Switching to air freight would double the total carbon footprint of an average Icebug shoe. There will be a lot of talk about sustainability this year. Some of it will be relevant, a lot of it will be marketing spin. As a build-up to our New Year's resolution, we'll talk about a couple of things we're doing already. Tomorrow we'll talk about putting a proper price on carbon.
Icebug
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We sold shoes for 700 000 SEK ($76.000) during Green Friday, which will now be donated to non-profits for forest preservation. We will give the money to naturarvet (Sweden), naturvern (Norway) and onetreeplanted (USA). Thanks to all our customers for helping us turn Black Friday into something good. 💚
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You are better than all the big shoe brands.
Sarah Chabane
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Last year the shoe brand Icebug committed to donating its #BlackFriday revenue to protect old-growth forests and they are doing the same this year. So if you need new shoes and are buying from them tomorrow you will contribute to protecting trees and wildlife! 🍃 Last year, their initiative allowed to preserve 7,4 acres of old-growth forests thanks to a partnership with Swedish Naturarvet. In 2021 Icebug will also work with Naturvernforbundet and One Tree Planted and is aiming for even more space for threatened species to live and thrive. Do you know other brands having similar initiatives during black week/friday?
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Governments should be protecting *all* their old growth forest. Logging releases much of the carbon into the atmosphere, and if the trees are used for pulp rather than wood, nearly all the carbon is released.
Icebug
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The key takeaway at this point from all of Icebug’s climate work so far: Decarbonizing the supply chain should be the top priority. For brands like us, with the main production in countries that have a lot of carbon in the energy mix and a lot of sunlight (most countries in the World), installing solar energy closest to where the energy is used (that is: on the roof of the factories) gives a substantial and immediate CO2 emission reduction. This is a quick win in a strategic dimension. And we need to move fast. Milestones in our climate work: 📉 2015-2020: Cutting emissions 10-15% by switching materials and processes. 🏭 2019: Becoming climate “positive” by offsetting all historical emissions, plus unavoidable current and future emissions by 200%. 🙋 2020: Committing to the 1,5 degrees roadmap for emission reductions, starting by halve by 2030. 👀 2021: Publishing CO2 footprints and full product journey for all styles. Radical transparency gives customers the chance to make an educated choice and share data with the industry. ☀️ 2022 (planned): Getting solar rooftop installed at factories in Vietnam. Estimated further cutting emissions by 15-25% on style level. There are no sustainable shoes. We started as beginners and are still learning. Our most important insight: Don’t wait for perfect to take action. How we get a grip on things is by using the BUG-method: 1. Begin by finding out what needs to be done. 2. Use that knowledge to act. 3. Get out there and share it with the World! Always seeking to get maximum impact. During the process, we build on and correct our knowledge, get a better grip on what needs to be done, take new, more appropriate action, maximize the impact of that…. And repeat. This work won’t end. We’ll keep striving to be a changemaker towards our North Star: A society where people can thrive on a planet in balance. The real starting point for our sustainability awakening was hearing about the Earth Overshoot Day. That’s the day when all the resources that the planet can regenerate have been consumed for that calendar year. Back in 2010, it was still in August. In 2021, it was in July. This is unsustainable in the most basic meaning of the word: We can’t go on like this. After July, we’re accumulating ecological debt for future generations to pay. With that insight, it’s impossible to be happy with business as usual. But knowing that something must change, doesn’t automatically make it happen. There are always external obstacles to overcome. Often internal development is also needed – going deeper into your values and sticking to them in your work life too, even when it makes business more complicated. Being a minuscule player in the footwear industry, a dirty industry that heavily depends on oil as raw material and with no scalable end-of life solutions, there was no quick fix for us to decrease our ecological footprint. Since people need shoes to get outdoors, and Icebug’s foundational purpose is to empower and inspire people to get out more, just quitting was not an option. We had different opinions inside Icebug if we would really be able to drive change, or if we would have to wait for the global footwear giants to act and piggyback on their work. Finally, we determined that it was our responsibility to at least try. We made being a changemaker in the transformation of the footwear industry to become fully sustainable (meaning: operating in a way that can go on) our second purpose. We rolled up our sleeves and got to work: Identifying what materials and processes made the largest impact and then addressing them in that priority. We investigated other options than the industry standard, switching to alternatives with less negative impact. (Spoiler alert: There are no environmentally friendly or sustainable shoes. Greenwashing check: When brands rave about special projects, compare that to the business’ total footprint). Read more about our climate work here: https://icebug.com/icebug-doing
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This really stick out: Always seeking to get maximum impact. During the process, we build on and correct our knowledge, get a better grip on what needs to be done, take new, more appropriate action, maximize the impact of that…. And repeat.
Icebug
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Our Sustainability Manager, Maria Munther, will be the headline speaker at The Inclusive Business Forum on Nov 23rd on the theme “Future proofing value chains”. Find out how you can join here https://www.inclusivebusinessforum.com/ At #IBF2021 Maria will be speaking about how Icebug co-created the FSC natural rubber value chain in Thailand. Sustainable rubber farming to protect Biodiversity and the climate.
Icebug
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As South Vietnam is starting to re-open after months in lock-down, we're put to the test: What's the real value of our climate commitment? Like many other footwear and apparel brands that have production in the Ho Chi Minh city area, Icebug is missing a lot of products. In our case, about one-third of what we had planned to sell during this fall and winter. It hurts, and we have had to cancel a lot of customers' orders. In this situation, the first business instinct is to switch to air freight instead of sea freight, cutting at least a month lead time and still catching most of the season. But before running with the first instinct, it's necessary to pause and think. Switching to air freight is not something you have to do. It's a choice to make. Because there is one huge problem. Air freight causes at least 20 times more carbon emissions. For an average shoe from Icebug this means that the carbon footprint would double. From 10 to 20 kilo CO2e per pair. When following the climate reporting, I always find it hard to wrap my head around this paradox: We know what must be done, still global carbon emissions increase. That's why this case is so interesting to put in the spotlight. It's an apparent conflict of interest. The pros of air freight weigh heavily: Servicing your customers better, being able to bring products to end-users that you think they need, increasing sales and profit. This will undoubtedly be beneficial for you in the short term. The cons are really just one major: Not taking your share of the responsibility for carbon emissions. Long term, everybody will bear the cost of the looming climate crisis. Are we ready to do the right thing when nobody's looking, and there's a significant cost for us here and now attached to it? Maybe I'm kicking in open doors here. Maybe you, who are our colleagues in the footwear and outdoor industry and are facing the same tough choice, already decided that it's worth to walk the climate talk. As a part of the industry, it would make me proud, and as one of the inhabitants of this planet, it would make me happy. It's a painful decision, but not a very difficult one. After the latest IPCC report, none of us can say we don't know that we're in a man-made climate emergency. To take our commitments about sustainability and responsibility seriously, we need to get on the roadmap of the Paris agreement. Then we can't double emissions now on the way to halving them in 2030. We have a limited carbon budget left to spend. In a climate emergency, no brand should deliberately cause avoidable emissions at scale. The possible exception would be small brands that are just getting started and wouldn't survive without the sales from air freighted products. As they're small, they will have a very marginal impact anyway. We don't have that excuse for the rest of us, where it will rather be a question of a few percentage points profit. Going forward, it will be impossible to combine using air freight at scale with a position as a responsible brand with a serious sustainability agenda and climate commitment. The biggest impact will be the decisions of the biggest players. We see ourselves as a footwear and an outdoor brand. So starting with the biggest brands, from footwear, Nike and adidas, and from outdoor, The North Face, a VF Company and Salomon: Will you use air freight from Vietnam? David Ekelund, co-founder and co-CEO ICEBUG A little more background about Icebug related to the situation: Apart from not using air freight, we have also decided not to cancel orders. After several months without income, the factories really need the business. For those that don’t catch this winter season window, we will use it as an early delivery for next year. We don’t use inbound air freight as part of our business model. For the past five years, we have not used any air freight from the factories to our warehouse.
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Great. I love when companies are outspoken on what needs to be done!
Icebug
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Icebug demands climate action. Putting a proper price on carbon at €100/ton and following the principle that polluters must pay would put decarbonizing on the top of the agenda for all businesses - not only those that are now taking the lead. As carbon emissions are on the rise again, it's obvious that business as usual is a disaster. Please give us a level playing field with new rules! We know that there are many of us that wants real change. If you or your business want to show your support for those driving the question of a proper carbon price, feel free to repost or make your signs with for example "€100/ton", "$100/ton", or "Polluters must pay".
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Totally agree! Go ahead!
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Putting a price on it gives a clear picture of the prize to pay and so can be an alarm to companies,industries and so on...to rethink lowering their carbon emissions.
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Great, @icebug!
Shared by Icebug
Welcome to the second iteration of Climate Solutions Live! Not1Bean in collaboration with We Don't Have Time, listen to our round table series where we highlight actors of change and climate solutions. For this second event, hear from: - John Penrose - Member of Parliament (UK) - David Eklund - Icebug - Georgina Wilson-Powell - Pebble Eco Lifestyle Magazine - Rafa Tapia - Eco Lodge Tourism San Juan, Santa Marta, Colombia Feel free to ask questions in the comments section, and we will ask the speakers to respond to the questions after the event. Listen Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knNPw_ezCJ4
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Great watch!
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I was totally unaware of the enormous shipping impact and inequality in the coffee supply chain. ☕️ Very informative.
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Joel, you are not alone. John Penrose very eloquently spoke about the changes needed to the construction industry, commenting that many houses in the UK "were built long before the climate emergency was recognised as such", the very same analogy applies to many supply chains in numerous sectors across the globe, the coffee sector being a very visible example. At any given time there are millions of tonnes of green (unroasted) coffee advertised as ready for reshipping across oceans they've already crossed. The CBI website actually publishes figures detailing how a country like Germany is somehow the world's 4th largest re-exporter of green coffee, despite coffee not growing in Germany. Germany is not alone in this, many many countries contribute openly to re-exporting millions of tonnes of this cargo back and forth across the same oceans, all in the name of profit. Then of course roasters in consumer countries add millions of extra road journeys to the supply chain once they've finished with it. The sad thing is that these coffees are marked as best before up to 3 years after the roasting date, meaning that all of this unnecessary shipping and trucking is easily avoidable - and that's without considering the vast amount of economic development achievable in producer countries should the huge coffee supply chain be transformed to a sustainable model. Roast at source (20% lighter cargo) and ship once and once only, our morning coffees should not be boiling the planet. Thank you for your comment Joel.
Icebug
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Icebug's goal is to have a fossil-free operation as soon as possible, and a minimal carbon footprint. When looking for bio-based materials to replace synthetics, new biomaterials are not always available for purchase. Recently, Icebug increased the proportion of natural rubber in its soles and discovered that it is difficult to get hold of sustainability certified natural rubber with the footwear quality needed. Therefore, Icebug started a collaboration with FSC – Forest Stewardship Council. We also got support from Inclusive Business Sweden, which are experts in designing business models that benefit low-income groups, in our case the smallholder rubber farmers. Together we created a project with the joint aim to establish a responsible value chain from the cultivation of rubber trees in Thailand to FSC-certified Icebug shoes in the store. It is about finding the right motivation for smallholder rubber farmers to switch to sustainable cultivation and to continue to do so. Until recently, there was no FSC-certified natural rubber in Thailand, which is the world's largest rubber producer. There is FSC-certified rubber from large plantations in Guatemala and Sri Lanka, but the volumes are quickly booked up. Very recently, some small-scale cooperatives in Thailand have obtained FSC certification, and there is potential for growth if demand can be aggregated to match the available supply. As liquid latex is a fresh product (like milk) with specific logistic challenges, it is a delicate phase to balance regular demand and supply of FSC rubber so that farmers can continue with sustainable farming. We need more shoe manufacturers to ask for FSC-certified rubber to get sufficient volumes to process the liquid rubber to shoe quality for a regular supply basis. Icebug strongly believes in sharing sustainability experiences and solutions between brands, to scale up and increase the speed of change in a sustainable direction. Therefore Icebug invited other footwear brands to join us in securing this supply chain in Thailand to secure sufficient long-term volumes for the footwear industry with resulting benefits for the smallholder farmers involved. June 22 2021, we met with 23 footwear brands in different sizes from all over the world! Thanks to all involved and we look forward to the next steps together with the suppliers in Thailand. / Maria Munther, sustainability manager of Icebug
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Truly great!
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148 w
My next shoe will be an Ice Bug! Keep it up!
Shared by Icebug
We Don't Have Time
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PARTNER UPDATE. Icebug is the world’s first footwear brand to openly declare the climate footprint for all its shoes. It was also the first footwear brand to be declared climate positive by the UN. Now the Swedish shoemaker has teamed up with We Don’t Have Time to spread the word – and to get ideas on how to further reduce its emissions. It was after seeing yet another disheartening media report on Earth Overshoot day some ten years ago that Icebug founder David Ekelund decided he needed to change his business model. ”It just became so strikingly clear that business as usual was a disaster, and that we needed to do something about it”, he says. It was tough at first. The company was still fighting to stay afloat, and David Ekelund doubted if a small brand like Icebug really could make a difference. But the company took it step by step, one material at the time. Started replacing virgin material with recycled ones, and began experimenting with alternative ways of dyeing fabrics. ”We believe that there is a lot we can learn from others to further reduce our emissions. In the race to zero, we all win by everybody increasing speed”, says David Ekelund, CEO and founder of Icebug. Today, all the textile materials Icebug uses for the new collections are either recycled, dyed with low-impact methods or Bluesign certified. In many cases the textiles are all of those, and when not, it’s mainly due to minimum quantity issues. According to the company´s own calculations, the carbon footprint for an Icebug shoe is now up to 35% lower than a standard running shoe from other manufacturers. One of the remaining challenges is how to phase out oil in the production of outsoles. ”We tried using 100 percent natural rubber, but it had a bad effect on the quality of the sole. When mixing the rubber with ten percent oil-based synthetic rubber, we managed to increase the durability by 30 percent”, says David Ekelund. In 2018, after having experienced the hottest summer ever recorded in Sweden, David Ekelund and his colleagues decided to take Icebug’s climate work one step further, by offsetting all its remaining emissions. ”Once we figured out a way to measure our carbon footprint it was really easy, and much cheaper than we expected it to be. We did our offsetting via UNFCCC, and it didn’t even cost us five kronor (about fifty cent euro) per shoe. We decided to offset 200 percent of our emissions, and to show we were serious about it we included all our emissions from 2001, when the company was founded.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_dNmE3oBK0 After a while the UNFCCC got back to Icebug, informing them that the company was now the world’s first climate-positive footwear brand, and that UNFCCC wanted to recognize it on their Climate Neutral Now platform. But this was by no mean the final destination for Icebug – just the start of a new circle of measuring, reducing and then finally offsetting the unavoidable emission, improving each time. Since then, Icebug has spent a lot of effort to make more detailed and exact footprint calculations. In February this year, Icebug became the first performance footwear brand to share the climate footprint on all shoes. When scanning the QR code on a shoebox for a pair of Icebug runners, the customer will not only get information on the carbon footprint and the percentage of recycled and bio-based materials for each shoe, but also access to the full supply-chain data, including in which factories the shoes and materials are made. ”This is a new era of radical transparency in the shoe business”, says David Ekelund. ”We now urge other footwear brands to share their sustainability data, and especially the products' CO2 footprint.” There are two things Icebug hopes to achieve by sharing all this data. One is to provide a sort of blueprint for other footwear brands who want to become more sustainable, and challenge those that claim they are to prove that they walk the talk. The other is to increase customer knowledge. ”We want every customer to start asking three questions to their favorite brands. What is your climate footprint? What actions are you taking to shrink it? And how do you take care of your remaining emissions?” Read more about Icebug's Follow the Footprints transparency work. You have put a lot of work and money into making your shoes more sustainable. Is it starting to pay off? ”We are beginning to see some competitive advantages. In recent years we have seen a stronger demand for sustainable products, and there are now retailers who are actively driving this transition.” Why have Icebug decided to partner with We Don’t Have Time? ”The main reason is that we want to create as much impact as possible. The fourth pillar of climate action, influencing society, is very important to us. If no one knows what we are doing, we miss the opportunity to drive change. We view this partnership as a way of reaching out, and to spread solutions.” How are you planning to use your Climate Dialogue page? ”We want to get climate ideas, for example on what steps we could take to further phase out oil in the production of soles. Maybe there’s a small entrepreneur out there with a great solution that we could help to scale.” By MARKUS LUTTEMAN Climate Communicator at We Don't Have Time FACT BOX Icebug AB was founded in Goteborg Sweden, in 2001. It is still owner-operated (no venture capital or multinational owners) Total sales 2020: $20M (projected 2021: $30M) Number of employees: 35 Total emissions 2020: 2,955 tonnes CO2e (6,000 tonnes CO2e offset) Icebug is a member of the Fair Wear Foundation, to increase transparency also regarding fair working conditions in the factories they cooperate with. Learn more about how Icebug calculates the climate impact of its products.
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This is great work, commitment and an exceptional example that @IceBug has set. There is a lesson for every big brand in it,
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They are walking the talk, good work to protect our winter Europe,
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16 h
Super cool! Didn't know about Protect our Winters before
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Good job by @ protectorwinter.Its that one step that makes a difference in the fight for climate action