XIAMEN, China: ANTA Group and the World Wide Fund for Nature announced Wednesday that the Chinese sporting goods major has become WWF’s first international partner in China’s sportswear and textile industry.
With the supports and resources provided by WWF’s global network and in fulfillment of goals on sustainable development and biodiversity conservation established by the United Nations, ANTA Group will start from its daily practices of environmental, social and corporate governance and collaborate with its upstream and downstream partners to promote the transformation and development of textile industry in water stewardship and packaging, reduce pressure on natural resources and the environment in the manufacturing process, advocate the principle of “reduce, reuse and recycle”, develop and apply degradable raw materials, jointly design sports products in accordance with sustainable development, and engage hundreds of millions of consumers with the global course of biodiversity conservation.
This partnership, subsequent to the collaboration in March on promoting “Earth Hour”, one of the world’s largest public movements for the environment, represents a significant move for ANTA Group to strengthen and expand its bond with WWF.
Based on a three-year collaboration framework, both parties have agreed to commit to objectives and measures as follows:
ANTA Group and WWF will jointly promote the Factory Assessment and Improvement System (FAIS), develop and promulgate innovative solutions for the transformation towards a greener textile industry. Both parties should share and exchange best practices of different stakeholders in the textile industry, improve supply chain management and drive industry-wide collaboration, in order to accelerate the sustainability transformation of textile factories. Specifically:
– Participating in the improvement of industrial water and energy usage, industrial waste emissions and supply chain management of at least 3,000 textile suppliers;
– Reducing energy consumption per unit of industrial value added by 30% and water consumption per unit of industrial value added by 22.5%;
– Reducing the total emissions of major water pollutants (i.e. COD, ammonia and nitrogen) cumulatively by 15%, so as to lessen the worsening impact of the textile industry on the environment and scale down freshwater, climate and ecosystem footprint.
With respect to biodiversity conservation, both parties will jointly popularize the new consensus on harmonious coexistence of humanity and nature, and take action to reverse the dangerous trend of biodiversity loss by 2030. ANTA Group will work along with WWF to support various forest and landscape restoration projects, and the first one will be initiated in key areas of Beijing and Xishuangbanna, Yunnan, for which restoration demonstrations of 600 acres in total and vocational training programs for local farmers and residents are under planning.
With the partnership agreement, ANTA Group and WWF will collaboratively develop and launch biodiversity-themed, educational products to be released and marketed to potential consumers on e-commerce platforms and in flagship stores.
ANTA Group asserted that in addition to supporting joint projects in collaboration with WWF, it would also further the sustainability transformation of its self-managing supply chain system: reducing over-packaging, gradually replacing the material of plastic bags from PE to the 100%-recyclable, environment-friendly LDPE, exploring possibilities of zero or at least less plastic packaging, and using more of recyclable or FSC-accredited paper materials for paper packaging are all among measures to be implemented.
