Recognition
UN Global Climate Action Award
In 2021, at COP26 in Glasgow, House of Baukjen was awarded the highest accolade a company could win in recognition of its proven sustainability efforts: the UN Global Climate Action Award. This prize, spearheaded by the UN Climate Change, is awarded to shine a light on examples of innovative action on climate issues from around the world and the inspiring companies that are moving the world toward a highly resilient, low-carbon future.
This was the first and last time that a fashion company won the award and a recognition of how pioneering and ambitious we had been and remain today.
"This past year, we have seen deadly wildfires and floods in many parts of the world. We urgently require solutions and actions from everyone: public and private sectors, civil society, academia, investors, cities and regions, etc. The winners of the 2021 UN Global Climate Action Awards provide tangible proof that solutions to tackle the climate crisis exist and that they can be replicated and quickly scaled up. This is what inspiring leadership looks like.”"
HOW we became a climate action leader
As a business, we had worked incredibly hard to achieve the progress for which we were recognized. From 2019 we started challenging virtually all processes, materials and commercial models of our existing business, initiating technical rethinks where needed to develop a new, more equitable model for the fashion industry, one we coined as “Fashion 2.0”. This transformation of our existing business model and pivot towards Fashion 2.0 had a demonstrable impact on many KPIs, including an average saving of 1.19 kg of CO2e and 830 litres of water for every garment we produced. In the first half of 2021 alone, this represented a total saving of 99 tonnes of carbon equivalent emissions and 74 million litres of water.
This recognition belongs to the company; to our team and manufacturers who have worked so hard to analyse and reduce emissions at every stage of operations.
"“Everyone has a role to play when it comes to confronting the climate crisis. The recipients of the UN Global Climate Action Awards are stepping up with the kind of bold and courageous leadership we need to see much more of to avoid the ever-worsening impacts of climate change.” "
Establishing Baukjen as an innovative Green brand
Receiving the Climate Action award from the United Nations cemented Baukjen’s position as a leading Green Fashion Brand.
Our work to become a low impact brand has entailed choosing fibres and fabrics with lower environmental footprint, many of which we ended up developing ourselves as they just didn’t exist at the time; rethinking how supply chain verticals could be more integrated, transparent, shorter and faster and how to run re-commerce and recycling at scale.
What’s Next? As one of the Best for the World B Corps, people and planet are at the heart of everything we do at House of Baukjen, so we are thrilled that our work in this area has been recognised by the United Nations. We haven’t been resting on our laurels though! We’re continuing to work as hard as ever to reduce emissions and the environmental impact of our business in every environmental SDG, whilst striving to have a positive impact on all the people we impact, directly or indirectly. We use our business as a force for good and want to encourage other companies to follow our lead and take action to combat climate change together. We’ll campaign to create a more sustainable fashion industry and lead the way as much as possible, sharing our path along the way.