VAUDE Climate Footprint

VAUDE has been a climate neutral company since January 1, 2022. In concrete terms, this means that we fully offset our global greenhouse gas emissions. You can find more information and how climate neutrality works here.

This page summarizes the most important key figures and correlations from our climate footprint assessment. The full document can be downloaded here.

At the company headquarters in Tettnang, VAUDE has already been completely climate neutral since 2012 (Scopes 1, 2 and 3). The system boundary of our climate footprint was the entire VAUDE operation in Tettnang until 2019.

Since 2019, we have also been determining the upstream emissions from our supply chain and include them in the climate footprint. 2019 forms the base year for VAUDE's science-based climate targets.

The focus of the VAUDE climate strategy is clearly on reducing emissions. We consider the compensation of unavoidable emissions as a stopgap measure to contribute more to climate protection using "money" than we can currently manage with our own products, processes and supply chains, because emissions-free materials are not yet available or technologies are not yet mature, or because suppliers have to make huge investments, for example, in fossil-free hot water generation, which they need to implement over several years.

At VAUDE, we have had over ten years of experience with climate accounting. Since 2019 we have created a reliable database in order to include not only all emissions "at home" at our company headquarters, but also the two largest emitters from the upstream supply chain:

• Materials from which VAUDE products are made.
• Energy consumed in the production of the materials.

Why this is important is clear from the following graphic:

All materials that VAUDE uses to make its products are a source of emissions during their extraction and refinement. The exact amount of emissions depends on several factors, such as whether it is a renewable resource that requires accounting for emissions from agriculture and forestry, the type of plastic used, and whether it is recycled.

We have defined the system boundary for calculating emissions from material consumption as including the manufacturing processes up to yarn production for textile materials, and all process steps up to polymer production (granules) for hard plastic components. At VAUDE, we measure material consumption through our product development database and the quantities produced.

You can read about the materials VAUDE consumes and what we are doing emissions from them here

In addition to material consumption, energy consumption in the processing of raw materials plays the major role in VAUDE's climate footprint. Electricity and heat derived from fossil fuels are significant drivers of climate-harming emissions, not only in Germany but also throughout the supply chains of the products we use on a daily basis.

We include all process steps involved in manufacturing the textile fabric when considering energy consumption during material production; in the case of hard plastic components, injection molding or comparable manufacturing processes.

The following graph shows the development of emissions at VAUDE since 2019.

After a slight decrease in 2020, emissions increased significantly in 2021 (by 17% compared to the base year, by 18% compared to the previous year). The reason for this is the strong growth of the company. This is where the rebound effect becomes visible: we can still use high efficiency improvements - but when we manufacture more and more products at the same time,we will, of course, produce greater emissions. More on the issue of "decoupling" below.

We are really pleased about the 5 percent reduction in emissions in 2022 compared to 2021! The graph shows that this was achieved in particular through fewer emissions from energy consumption in material production. This shows the first successes of the industry project to decarbonize the supply chain, in which VAUDE is working with several other outdoor brands. More on this here.

The second major emissions-generating area, raw material/material consumption, has not yet been reduced, although we already use a great many recycled materials. We expect this effect to become visible with next year's climate footprint. In the Summer 2024 collection, 71% of all VAUDE products already consist of more than 50% recycled or biobased materials. Read more here.

Details on the other parts of this graphic below.

What are scopes again? You can find the explanations here.

Both material consumption and energy consumption for material production belong to Scope 3 emissions. At VAUDE, these emissions are distributed as is typical for the textile industry. A large part (well over 90 percent) of these emissions occur in the upstream processes of the supply chain and thus belong to Scope 3.

Scope 2 emissions do not relate to the supply chain, but to the company's own site. Since VAUDE uses completely renewable energy for its power supply at the company headquarters, there are no Scope 2 emissions. More about the power supply at VAUDE here.

Scope 1 emissions also relate to the company's own location: They come directly from the chimney of the heating system for the company's own buildings (more on heating energy here) as well as from the exhaust of the company vehicle fleet (more on this here).

In addition to the emissions calculated from data collected directly in our climate footprint, other emissions arise from business operations that are only estimated due to the lack of available measured data. According to the GHG Protocol, this procedure is called "Scope 3 Screening".

At VAUDE, another 2,105 metric tons of CO2e were generated in 2022 in scope 3 screening from rented premises (category 3.8), franchise stores (category 3.14) and the disposal of products at the end of their life cycle (category 3.12).

The science-based climate targets that VAUDE has set for itself relate to Scope1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 respectively, in accordance with the requirements of the Science Based Targets Initiative.

The following graphs show the targets and target achievement:

SBT 1. VAUDE commits to reduce absolute Scope 1 greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2026, starting from the base year 2019.

Scope 1 emissions are generated at VAUDE by the gas heating system and the company vehicle fleet. More about our savings from heating can be found here. Details on emissions from employee mobility here.

More about mobility management at VAUDE here.

SBT 2. VAUDE commits to continue sourcing 100% electricity from renewable sources annually until 2030.

SBT 3. VAUDE commits to reduce absolute Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions for purchased goods and services by 50% by 2030, starting from a base year of 2019.

Emissions cannot be completely avoided as long as our global economy is based on fossil raw materials. It is already a small success if emissions are "decoupled"(don't grow at the same rate as the company) even if this is, of course, not enough to combat climate change. We all have to reduce emissions in absolute terms, not just in relative terms in relation to company growth. Nevertheless, a look at the relative development is interesting.

Of course, packaging material also contributes to the consumption of resources and causes climate-damaging emissions.

You can find out what VAUDE is doing to reduce these as much as possible here

“Sales packaging” is everything that ends up in private households and is disposed of there, for example shoe boxes or foil bags. Transport packaging is usually disposed of in retail stores and includes things such as cardboard packaging.

Here you can find out more about the emissions caused by VAUDE from merchandise goods logistics.

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