About Athleta

Athleta is an active and sportswear brand that specializes in high-end workout gear and is well renowned for its apparel design, quality, and functionality. It was founded in 1998 and was acquired by Gap Inc in 2008. Athleta believes in "the power of she" and its mission is "to ignite a community of active, healthy, confident women and girls who empower each other to reach their limitless potential."

Athleta's Sustainability Platform

Certified B Corp Athleta is a certified B corporation, which signifies that it demonstrates high social and environmental performance, makes a legal commitment to be accountable to all stakeholders, and exhibits transparency when it comes to performance and progress. As of 2019, Athleta had a score of 84.3 out of 100, which marginally exceeds the minimum requirement of 80 points. While it lagged behind in categories like human rights training and donations, it scored full points when it came to environmental criteria, social criteria, and documentation processes. It also received the highest possible score for Supplier Code of Conduct.

Sustainable Materials Athleta strengthens its commitment to sustainability by innovating and incorporating materials with a lower footprint. TENCEL, which creates a semi-synthetic fiber made from regenerated cellulose, is integrated into Athleta's consumer experience. TENCEL partnered with Athleta to create Nirvana, a wood-based fiber harvested from responsibly managed forests where 99% of the raw material comes from certified or controlled sources and are produced using renewable energy. The companies collaborated once again to bring sustainable towels into Athleta's workout studios.

Athleta nearly achieved its goal of sourcing 80% of apparel materials with sustainable fibers by 2020, achieving 76% instead. It sourced these fibers from recycled plastic bottles, fabric scraps, nylon fishing nets, and sustainably grown trees. Athleta's use of recycled polyester has saved the plastic equivalent of more than 38 million water bottles from entering landfills. Athleta uses organic cotton, meaning no synthetic agricultural chemicals like fertilizers or pesticides are used.

Because Athleta falls under the Gap umbrella, the two companies share many sustainability initiatives, including: deriving 100% of cotton from more sustainable sources by 2025, reducing water and energy consumption, reducing GHGs in owned and operated facilities by 50% and diverting 80% of its US waste from landfills by 2020, and partnering with Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), which works with farmers to improve cotton production for the environment and workers. Since 2014, Gap Inc.'s suppliers have saved more than 750 million liters of water and sourced more than 11.5 million pounds of Better Cotton, equivalent to making 7.4 million pairs of jeans with more sustainable cotton. BCI achieves its goals by encouraging farmers to phase out hazardous pesticides, promoting diversity, water stewardship, and soil health, and using less water and energy. However, BCI's principles are non-binding, not completely traceable, and the organization has been connected to forced labor.

Water Stewardship and Empowering Women and Girls Athleta emphasizes empowering women and girls belonging to communities impacted by the apparel industry and improving their access to clean drinking water. This mission is centered around water stewardship, which is the belief that access to clean and safe water is a human right and an environmental responsibility.

Gap established the Personal Advancement and Career Enhancement (PACE) program in 2007, which aims to provide women with foundational life skills, technical training, and professional and personal support. In 2021, Gap achieved its goal of impacting one million women and girls in its supply chain through this program, resulting in an 81% increase in communication skills and a 75% increase in financial literacy.

Gap's ultimate goal is to create a water resilient value chain and net positive water impact by 2050. It has established programs that improve wastewater quality, manages chemicals in water, and ensures that water mills meet certain standards. It strives to reduce its water footprint in sourcing and manufacturing through innovations in materials. For instance, Gap utilizes a material called Washwell, which reduces the water required to dye and finish garments by at least 20% compared to traditional methods.

Gap's partnerships have been critical to its advancement in the social causes that it cares about. The Gap Foundation became a founding partner and investor of the Resilience Fund for Women in Global Value Chains, designed to advance systemic changes that build resilience for women. Gap pushes for industry change in addressing water scarcity and improving access to water and sanitation, such as with the Water Resilience Coalition and the Water Innovation Center for Apparel.

Initial Impressions In my research, I was unable to find tangible data on Athleta and Gap's emissions to date, its energy and water consumption and efficiencies, and its environmental footprint. Having such a resource would strengthen the credibility of its claims and would help track the success of environmental and social initiatives. Seeing positive results can be incentivizing and knowledge sharing can help companies learn from each other's best practices. Moreover, I was able to learn about each material when browsing individual product pages. However, I wished there was more information about the sources of these materials and a section featuring Athleta's most sustainable products on its website. There was no information about whether the materials met any environmental standards or certifications. I believe Athleta is on the right track as it has selected key focus areas to tackle at a deeper level rather than addressing multiple issues at a surface level.

Gap's Strengths and Weaknesses as per the Fashion Transparency Index

The Fashion Transparency Index analyzes and ranks the world's biggest fashion brands based on their public disclosure of human rights and environmental policies, practices and impacts, in their operations and supply chains. I reviewed the performance of the fashion industry in the metrics assessed by the FTI, comparing and contrasting Athleta's performance alongside.

To my surprise, Athleta was not listed in the FTI. I thought it was odd that other Gap brands (Old Navy and Banana Republic) were listed while Athleta was missing, and wondered whether Athleta was excluded for potentially outperforming Gap and its other components. For the purpose of my research, I analyzed the results for Gap in the FTI.

Policy and Commitment

This category reviews social and environmental policies of brands' employees and workers in the supply chain, how these policies are implemented, if there are relevant goals and targets, and if brands are reporting annual progress.

Strengths: Gap scored a 10 on publishing reports on efforts to improve human rights and environmental impacts. This shows that in addition to setting goals and policies, Gap monitors its progress and holds itself accountable. I took a look at Athleta's ESG report and a portion of it was dedicated to outlining Athleta's goals, the status of these goals, and progress so far. However, most goals were new and established a baseline for the company, while only one goal had been achieved. With continued accountability and following up on achieving goals, Athleta can make significant progress and align its actions with its words.

Weaknesses: A big issue in the industry is lack of transparency around supply chain policies — particularly labor — and Gap fares well on certain labor issues, as it does not subcontract to home workers. Nevertheless, it scored zeros in freedom of association and the right to organize, notice period dismissal, and disciplinary action.

Governance

This category reviews who on the executive board has responsibility for social and environmental performance, how this is implemented, how social and environmental improvements are linked to employees, CEO and supplier performance, and whether there is worker representation on the board.

Strengths: Gap has identified board members who are accountable for ESG issues and has described the implementation of board level accountability. The ESG team was integrated into the Strategic Growth Office — a company unit charged with thinking beyond its core business to meet the consumer and industry demands of the future — in 2021 in order to maximize cross-departmental collaboration. Gap's Sustainability Committee provides regular updates to the Board of Directors and meets with leaders from Sourcing, Production, Brand and Operations, and ESG. This ensures that sustainability is not siloed, but instead integrated across departments to optimize positive impacts.

Weaknesses: There is no worker representation on the board at Gap. However, Gap describes its goal for all factory workers to have their "voices heard through representative, gender-equitable workplace committees" by 2025. While Gap prioritizes worker representation in factories, this has not yet reached the executive level. There is no mention of executive pay linked to environmental and social targets, suggesting that executives are not incentivized to improve their impacts as their compensation is not based on achieving these targets.

However, Gap's ESG report mentions employee incentives to improve impacts. Gap provides opportunities for employees to connect with each other and their local communities through volunteering, rallies, and fundraising events. Salaried corporate employees are enabled to volunteer for five "on the clock" hours per month, which Gap matches through monetary donations, thus empowering them to support the causes they care about. As of 2021, there were 266,000 hours of volunteer work and more than 3,000 NGOs were supported by direct donations.

Traceability

This category reviews what brands have published about their suppliers at three levels: manufacturing, processing facilities, and raw materials.

Strengths: Gap mentions industry partnerships that helps it further its goal of sourcing materials sustainably. For instance, it was the first brand to join the US Cotton Trust Protocol (USCTP), which traces products with US grown cotton through the supply chain. Gap reports on all Tier 1 suppliers and has more than 65% visibility on Tier 2, publishing these details through the Open Apparel Registry, an open source tool that maps garment facilities globally and assigns a unique identification to each. Athleta only has Tier 1 suppliers, which reduces intermediaries and enhances traceability.

Weaknesses: For Tier 1 suppliers, there is no mention of trade unionization allowance, independent worker committees, facility certifications, and the name of the parent company. Basic information about facilities are mentioned but the reports do not go into detail about factory conditions. Gap scored only 0.5 on Tier 3 Raw Materials Suppliers Disclosure as there is no information available except for whether or not the company discloses the source of one or more specific raw material.

Know, Show, Fix

This category reviews what brands disclose about their human rights and environmental due diligence processes, how they assess suppliers against policies, the results of audits, what brands do when problems are discovered, and how workers can file and address complaints.

Strengths: Gap scored a 6.7 out of 10 for human rights diligence. It is transparent and describes the steps taken to address human rights issues. It has an inclusive approach that factors in women, who are critical to its supply chain.

Gap identifies human rights risks, impacts, and violations and lays out ways in which these risks can be prevented and remedied. It follows a strict Human Rights Policy and has established a Code of Vendor Conduct (COVC), both of which are based on internationally accepted labor standards.

Weaknesses: While Gap shares basic details about factories and suppliers, it does not document details of working conditions. There is no stakeholder engagement in human rights due diligence, suggesting that workers' voices are not heard. While Gap scored a 6 for its remediation process, the outcomes of these remedies are not mentioned. This lessens Gap's transparency because the impacts of its actions are not measured.

Gap scored a 1.7 for facility assessments. In 2021, it scored a 2.5, so there has been a decline. This may be because in 2021, Gap published selected audit findings for facilities that extended beyond Tier 1. However, it now provides select audit findings only for Tier 1 facilities, which begs the question about whether Gap has something to hide.

Spotlight Issues

This category reviews whether there is disclosure on the most urgent and difficult problems facing the industry. It examines the information brands disclose on issues including forced labor, living wages, purchasing practices, unionization, racial and gender equality, overproduction, waste, water and chemicals, and climate and deforestation.

Strengths: While Gap publishes information on these topics and acknowledges the role it plays as a company, it could do better. Gap scored a 3.3 on talking about modern slavery related violations, simply disclosing data on its prevalence and not mentioning ongoing actions in the context of its own supply chain.

Gap scored a 5 on gender equality as a result of having no gender-based labor violations or actions. However, there are no actions focused on promotion of gender equality in supplier facilities and Gap only reveals the gender breakdown of job roles for its own operations. Gap is composed of 76% of female employees overall, with 55% in the Board of Directors, 24% in technology roles, and 40% Women of Color.

Gap scored a 10 when it came to sustainable materials, including the sources of fibers, strategies to reduce textiles derived from virgin fossil fuels, reduce virgin plastics, and minimize the impact of microfibers. Gap therefore performs better than the industry average in this regard.

Weaknesses: While it has made commitments to eliminate hazardous chemicals from water, Gap does not reveal the results of tests conducted on supplier wastewater and water risk assessments. Gap scored a 2.7 on waste circularity, as there are no repair services and take-back schemes. Gap continues to fare poorly when it comes to living wages, unionization, racial equality, the ethnic pay gap, and modern slavery related violations.

Reflection

Overall, I was impressed with the actions that Athleta is taking towards improving its environmental and social impact as a corporation that holds significant power in influencing the decisions of its vast ecosystem of consumers. Athleta is leading the way for companies in the activewear space and allowing other companies to learn and incorporate similar initiatives and strategies into their own business models.

The ESG reports I perused revealed an abundance of goal setting, followed up by the status of the goal and the outcomes and progress made so far. Through this documentation, Athleta does a good job of holding itself accountable and ensuring transparency in communications with the consumer and within the company. Many companies tend to spread themselves thin by addressing multiple sustainability issues at once, resulting in a lack of focus and tackling the cause at a surface level for performative reasons. However, it is apparent that Athleta digs deep into the causes it addresses (sustainable materials, water stewardship, and the empowerment of women and girls) and ensures that these causes are relevant to its operations instead of being chosen out of convenience. It is also clear that Athleta examines each stage of its supply chain and product life cycle to understand how processes can be streamlined for circularity and efficiency; this applies to both materials and labor.

Nevertheless, Athleta has scope to improve. I believe that it can improve its traceability of raw materials and processes within the supply chain. While Athleta mentions that its factories meet certain certifications and standards and provides statistics on the implementation of good labor practices, it does not provide a list of the exact suppliers and factories along with the conditions in these factories.

There is a lack of transparency in the abstract and vague terminology being used in goal setting. For example, Athleta states that it aims to source 100% of its cotton from "more sustainable sources", but does not outline what exactly this entails. Similarly, even though Athleta has partnerships with organizations reputable for setting high industry standards — like Better Cotton and the US Cotton Trust Protocol — it fails to mention the exact sources of cotton and the practices being followed. This may be misleading as there is a minimum threshold required to claim certification from these organizations, so it is unknown whether Athleta is doing the bare minimum or outperforming industry norms. Hence, there is scope to improve traceability and transparency.

To sum up, I believe Athleta can become more sustainable in the following ways: improve traceability of materials and labor, provide details about exact practices being implemented for different partnerships and certifications, and continue to leverage strengths while also identifying weak points of the business and developing sustainability efforts in these areas.