Kontoor Brands, Inc, a global lifestyle apparel company, with a portfolio led by two of the world’s most iconic consumer brands, Wrangler® and Lee has announced the expansion of its Indigood™ program, an initiative that targets water savings during the fabric construction phase of the apparel supply chain. Debuted in 2019 with the introduction of foam-dyed denim, the Indigood™ program has expanded to include any water savings technology in apparel fabric production that uses at least 90 percent less water than conventional fabric production.
Kontoor Brands produces millions of products globally each year, and has committed to using its global scale to advance the denim industry. Through the expansion of the Indigood™ program, Kontoor is encouraging denim mills across the globe to adopt radically different water saving technologies in the vein of indigo foam dye. Additional approved technologies include increased water recycling, advancements in the dyeing process and fabric finishing innovations. Kontoor works with independent third parties to validateIndigood ™ claims, ensuring they meet the 90 percent threshold.
In 2020, Wrangler announced it had saved more than 7 billion liters of water in the finishing phase of denim manufacturing, exceeding its 2020 goal of saving 5.5 billion liters, and launched a new goal, to reduce its water usage by 50 percent by 2030. The Wrangler brand’s updated water goal targets the fiber production, fabric construction, and product finishing phases of the denim supply chain, which together encompass more than 95 percent of the total water used throughout the production of a pair of jeans.
The Lee brand also focuses on conserving water throughout the denim manufacturing supply chain including fiber production with goals for sustainable cotton and sustainable synthetics by 2025, in fabric construction, and in finishing, where Lee has saved more than 1 billion liters of water. In 2020, Lee announced its first global sustainability goals, which include increasing Indigood™-dyed products every year through 2025.
