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Ethisphere Institute recently released their 2012 World’s Most Ethical Companies list. This year’s list includes 145 organizations, up from 110 companies on the 2011 list.  While this is close to a 25% increase over last year there are some notable omissions in the Apparel and Specialty categories, adidas and Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) to name a couple.

adidas, along with Patagonia, was instrumental in launching the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, “an industry-wide group of leading apparel and footwear brands, retailers, manufacturers, non-governmental organizations, academic experts and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency working to reduce the environmental and social impacts of apparel and footwear products around the world”. However, last year GreenPeace targeted several brands in their Detox campaign aimed at “eliminating all releases of hazardous chemicals from their supply chains and their products”. So even though adidas and H&M have both pledged to purge all toxins by 2020, this was enough to remove them from the WME list for the time being.

Patagonia is one of 23 companies who have made the list since inception, six years ago. This is another example of why Patagonia is one of the best apparel companies in our industry. The other US apparel companies that repeated this year include: Gap Inc. and Timberland, both brands have been featured several times on this site.  Il Faut, Israel, also remained on the list.  In the Specialty categories Target and Ten Thousand Villages also made the list again this year.

Check out the complete WME list to discover who the other 145 good guys are so that you may support them.  Transferring our hard earned money to companies who are operating ethically will show other companies that it pays to join the movement.

Fairwear until nex time…….