Fast Retailing is widening its climate push after reaching an emissions milestone years ahead of plan, and the company says the biggest gains have come from working more closely with suppliers.
At a sustainability discussion at Uniqlo’s showroom in New York on Thursday, Kazumi Yanai, a director at Fast Retailing, said the group had been cautious about setting ambitious promises at first, but had since expanded its goals as progress accelerated.
The Uniqlo parent said i...
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t cut Scope 3 emissions, which cover indirect pollution across the value chain, by 20 per cent from a 2019 baseline, meeting its target five years early. It now wants a further 10 per cent reduction by 2030. Fast Retailing’s science-based targets had already been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative, which aligned its earlier 2030 climate plan with the Paris Agreement.
The company has also made sharp progress on emissions from its own operations. It said Scope 1 and 2 output fell by 90.3 per cent by fiscal 2025, again five years ahead of schedule, helped by a rise in renewable electricity use across stores and offices to 93.5 per cent from 84.7 per cent a year earlier. Fast Retailing has separately said it aims to reach 100 per cent renewable power across its operations by 2030.
A key part of the wider reduction has been a shift towards lower-impact materials. Fast Retailing said such materials now make up 19.4 per cent of its mix, with a goal of 50 per cent by 2030. Recycled polyester made from PET bottles accounted for 46.4 per cent of all polyester used, up from 41.5 per cent the previous year.
Yanai said long-term relationships with suppliers had helped the company move more quickly, particularly in areas such as switching away from coal and improving energy use. The company contrasted that approach with a broader industry tendency to move between factories in search of lower prices.
Fast Retailing’s earlier work has largely focused on Tier 1 factories, but it is now trying to extend its oversight further upstream. Last year it launched a wool pilot in Australia to improve visibility over sourcing and to examine animal welfare, environmental performance, human rights and workplace safety. It is also reviewing construction and logistics operations, which it says can carry serious human rights risks.
Those efforts sit within a broader responsible procurement programme that includes new raw-material sourcing guidelines. Seneiya Navajas, sustainability director at Uniqlo USA, said the company intends to share those standards with partners and set material-specific targets, beginning with key inputs, to speed adoption across the chain. She said Fast Retailing ultimately wants to apply its own standards for quality, environmental impact and workers’ rights from raw material to finished product.
Paula Bernstein, associate director of sustainability science at Worldly, said the move towards tighter verification matters because claims that cannot be checked amount to marketing rather than meaningful disclosure.
Source: Noah Wire Services
