Sustainable sourcing – our private label products

We continue to work towards improving protection and conditions for workers within our supply chains and reduce the impact of climate change. Our strategy incorporates:

• Private label production – from raw materials, manufacturing to materials and packaging
• The sustainability performance of our strategic brand suppliers
• Carbon emissions, reducing water usage and other climate change mitigation measures across our entire supply chain
• Improving customer and colleague awareness of ‘end of product life’ options in accordance with ‘Circular economy’ principles’

Detailed analysis plays an integral role in ensuring sustainability standards are achieved, documented and used as a baseline for further progression. Click here to learn more about our supply chain.

Our Private Label commitment to reducing environmental impact across our supply chain is undertaken through our Environmental Management Program (EMP). This program identified opportunities in reducing carbon emissions and promoting sustainable practices. Preventing the use and discharge of harmful chemicals and enhancing water security and biodiversity.

This new approach to environmental monitoring enables:

• Improved data engagement with additional supply chain tiers
• Improved visibility of the environmental performance of our wider supply chain
• Earlier issue identification and remedy
• Provision of greater transparency for our suppliers and customers

Learning through evaluation of third-party environmental auditing, we developed the "Cleaner In Production" programme we graded the Wet Processing sites across the Private Labels and identified where we needed to work collaboratively with the suppliers to improve those sites who were graded as Underperforming.

The next phase has begun to assess the Fabric Production sites and we expect completion of this phase by early 2025.

These improvements demonstrate that our team is on track to meet, and ultimately meet and exceed our internal group targets.

Our strategy to improve supply chain environmental performance and development of the Cleaner In Production programme is detailed on the eight-stage process (from research to application and and analysis). Through this we aim to support and encourage our suppliers with their approach to environmental management improvements.

The JD Group is committed to improving cotton production for cotton industry workers and the environment in which it grows. JD is a member of the ‘Better Cotton’ initiative (formerly known as BCI)

Better Cotton farmers grow cotton using more environmentally-friendly techniques such as ‘Sustainable water practices’, in addition to encouraging the use of non-chemical methods of crop protection.

Our membership of Better Cotton has enabled farmers to achieve more income, while reducing water consumption and the use of pesticides.

At present, our Private Labels goods in production uses over 95% ‘Better Cotton’, exceeding our target ahead of schedule. Our customers now benefit from accessing more products that have can be evidenced to have been sourced sustainably, with reduced water consumption and pesticide use

Our JD Private Label sustainable sourcing progress is tracked via an internal ‘medal-based’ system recognising Private Label brands using higher volumes of sustainable materials. Key progress has been made in the method of calculation resulting in weight based metrics. This enables us to measure, monitor and increase sustainability improvements across our Private Label products

Our Private Label design and development teams work to actively promote and encourage sustainable practices in every stage of the supply chain from initial concept to final production.

Conscious-led designing, the increased use of sustainable materials and incorporating sustainable manufacturing processes into the production will assist us to achieve our goals. Examples include:

• Encouraging our supply chain partners to use renewable energy sources such as Solar or Wind and efficient manufacturing technology
• Eliminating Greenhouse Gas emissions by using technologies to reduce the CO2 footprint of the manufacturing process
• Evaluating the manufacturing processing sites that are using processes that reduce both water usage and waste water consumption. Monitoring the discharge of chemicals into the water streams to promoting clean water stewardship benefiting the local communities