The topic of yearly goals is generally confined to the new year period but to continue to make progress – especially as a business founded on doing good in the world - it’s important to reference them often. Now that 2024 is very much in full swing, we want to take the time to break down our goals for the year, so you know where we’re heading, what we’re prioritising, and what we’re continuing to build on.
We’ve broken our 2024 goals down into six different categories to be sure we’re covering all the core elements of what we do at Untouched World:
Product
Our product goals span from what we’re making our garments from to what we’re packaging them in.
Care and longevity
It’s important that we sustain what we’ve already created so our product goals begin with the continuation of Mending Mondays at our flagship store. To extend the reach of our team’s mending know-how further, we also plan to work on a new mending video series so it’s available to our entire community. We will add sustainability information and care instructions for each fabric to our website to help improve garment care knowledge too.
Knowing our impact
We will be mapping the lifecycle of ten key products annually to understand their potential impacts. This mapping follows each stage of production from farm (where the raw material is produced) to post-consumer (when the garment reaches the end of its life). We will then create a plan for the rest of our range within five years.
Material focus
In 2024, we are continuing to work on our zero microplastics to waterways goal by progressing towards making all garments from 100% natural fibres. This year we’re focusing on research and development for 100% natural sewing threads and hardware. We will be formalising a preferred materials list and certification index for our team to use when sourcing our fabrics. And finally, we’ll be ensuring all packaging materials are made from recycled materials and are fully recyclable.
Supply Chain Development
These goals are all about improving and reinforcing our supply chain so it’s the most fair and transparent it can be.
Formalising and updating
In 2024 we will be formalising our Modern Slavery policy document (which helps reduce the risk of modern slavery in the supply chain) and implementing it, as well as tracking all our tier 1 suppliers’ statistics on living wages so we have a clear overview of wages in the supply chain. We will also be raising awareness of our new animal welfare policies online – based around the 5 Domains - a meaningful progression of our existing policies. To advocate for others making this kind of update, we will be working with key partners to promote the work we have done in developing our new policy.
Transparency
Transparency is important for us as a business so we have oversight of our supply chain, and for you as our customer so you can trust we do what we say.
Tracking and tracing
In 2024 we will be ensuring that 100% of our own garment supply chain is fully traced. We will also be tracking all fibres to see where they are grown and if they originate from regenerative farming sources, which will be an important step towards our longer-term goal of sourcing 100% of our fibre from regenerative sources by 2027. To help with this in-depth tracking we aim to ensure we have collected 100% of the Tier 4 data for each fibre we use. (Tier 4 means from the point of cultivation and extraction of the raw material.)
Working with partners
Our suppliers and partners are an important piece of the transparency puzzle, therefore we will continue to audit our top four suppliers on our supplier code of conduct requirements and we will be profiling key suppliers and partners to share the work they are doing with our audience. Alongside this, with the help of New Zealand Merino, we plan to collect and share regenerative farming index data points for our primary merino farming partner, Glenthorne Station, so we can further understand the benefits of regenerative practices on their land.
Waste and Recycling
By setting goals around waste and recycling we can significantly reduce our impact, especially at our HQ.
Reducing impact
We have multiple reduction goals we want to reach by the end of the year which are: reducing our paper use a further 10%, reducing our water usage by 10% pro rata in line with our production, and reducing our energy use across our organisation by 5%. We also aim to divert 10% of non-textile waste (created by our office, kitchen, and other business activities) from landfill in the same period.
Finding solutions
To meet our goal of no textile waste to landfill by the end of 2024, we are committed to finding a solution to our nylon drawthread (used to separate panels in the knitting process), whether it is a recycling solution or a durable natural fibre alternative. We are also seeking a local composting source for all the coffee and food waste (such as grounds and scraps) from our UW kitchen, and we will be establishing a formal recycling process for our packaging and point of sale boards.
Impact
A focus on impact isn’t just about reducing our footprint or tackling waste, it’s also about maximising the positive impacts we can have.
Education
There are many ways in which we plan to continue to educate our team and community in 2024, from implementing training documents on our sustainability practices for new kitchen staff to sharing our sustainability learnings and thought leadership via our blog and in our weekly team meetings. We will be working with Otago Polytech to introduce a fashion and textiles-focused version of our Untouched World Foundation ‘Leadership for a Sustainable Future’ programmes for their students, and we are working towards introducing a corporate version too.
Growing our reach
As well as launching new programmes via the UWF, we plan to expand our impact further by supporting external giving projects to help support people and planet. We will continue to align with the UN to support our UWF alumni to participate in UN-led sustainability conferences, and we will open a new store in Auckland, allowing more people to experience our product first hand.
Reporting
Setting goals and reporting go hand in hand. As a brand dedicated to transparency, we will always share our progress with you.
Sharing progress and knowledge
By next year you can expect to see specific case studies on what we’ve learned in 2024. In our next impact report, we will ensure that every chapter and department has SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) goals and that each of our internal goals is aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (developed by the UN). Our fabric training manuals will also be published online and we will develop a product page dedicated to sustainability information about our designs.
Our full 2023 Impact Report is available to read online now. It covers everything from the gender breakdown of our team and team wellbeing to what progress we made in 2023 and where our garments are made. You can read it here.
