Sustainability strategies are highly dynamic. With changing levels of ambitions – from meeting compliance expectations to aligning with stakeholders and gaining competitive advantage – firms must regularly update their approaches. The 2024 Verdantix ESG & sustainability global corporate survey found that updating sustainability strategy is a top or high priority for funding over the next two years for over 50% of respondents. Here, we profile an organization that has recently refreshed its climate, circularity and human rights goals.
Who?
PUMA, a German sportswear manufacturer with 8.6 billion euros in revenue (FY2023) and over 18,000 employees.
What particular challenges do they face?
PUMA faces the dual challenges of decarbonizing its operations and supply chain, as well as responsibly sourcing raw materials, gaining transparency in the supply chain and ensuring good supplier work conditions.
What did they do?
The firm set 10 sustainability targets, 10FOR25, to be achieved in 2025. PUMA made significant progress in all of them and announced that it achieved two, “Plastics and the Oceans” and “Human Rights”, two years ahead of schedule in 2023. In the same year, it reduced GHG emissions by 204% compared with 2022.
In November 2024, PUMA announced new goals, Vision 2030, which include reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 90% by 2030 and reducing Scope 3 emissions by 33%. The firm also announced circularity-related goals, such as using 100% recycled polyester fabric by 2030. Human rights targets include closing the gender pay gap and providing supplier training on human rights.
How did they do it?
To progress in its sustainability targets, PUMA is:
- Transitioning to renewable electricity across facilities, offices and stores.
- Rolling out training programmes to suppliers to help them set and achieve science-based targets.
- Upgrading logistics by partnering with Maersk to offer low-carbon shipping options.
- Producing LCAs of top products to understand environmental footprint across value chains.
- Increasing the percentage of recycled materials in products. In 2023, eight out of 10 products were made of certified or recycled materials.
Where you can find out more:
To read more about PUMA’s climate and sustainability initiatives, see the Vision 2030 announcement and PUMA’s 2023 sustainability report.
