Tracking our progress

Tracking and reducing our carbon footprint

Fristads is committed to taking action on global climate change and our goal is to decrease our emissions of CO2 by 50% by 2030. In order to reduce our emissions, we need to understand where they originate from and base our actions on actual data. We measure the climate impact throughout our value chain using the standards defined by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and report our emissions using three scopes.

New base year and methodology

In 2023 our owner Hultafors Group joined the Science Based Targets initiative, which required us to change the base year for all scopes to 2022 (previously 2018 for Scope 1 and 2, and 2019 for Scope 3).

We have also changed the methodology for the data collection, increasing the amount of our own calculations that are used instead of industry estimates and averages like before. By collecting actual data from our suppliers as a part of our development of an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for clothing, we are able to get more accurate figures for our emissions. The new data shows that the climate impact from our production is lower than previously assumed.

Commenting the result

​​​​​​​Scope 1 & 2
In 2023, Fristads’ emissions of CO2 in Scope 1 and 2 amounted to 817 tonnes in total, which is a decrease of 5% compared with the base year 2022. The relatively modest overall reduction of emissions in Scope 1 and 2 can be traced to our change of base year, from 2018 to 2022, since the significant reduction that occurred in this time period is not reflected in the current results. Prior to the change of base years, we had already surpassed our goal of reducing CO2 emissions in Scope 1 and 2 by 50% by 2030, due in part to climate compensation via Hultafors Group.
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Scope 3
​​​​​​​In 2023, Fristads’ emissions of CO2 in Scope 3 amounted to 28,452 tonnes, which represents a decrease of 47% compared with the base year 2022. Two main factors can explain the substantial reduction in Scope 3: We purchased fewer products and reduced the amount of emissions per product by 18%. Approximately one third of the decrease in Scope 3 can be attributed to fewer products purchased in 2023 as we
balanced our stocks in the wake of a major stock buildup in 2022. The reduction of emissions per produced product is a direct result of our ongoing work to transition to more sustainable materials in our products and increase the share of products with an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) in our range.

Next steps to reduce our emissions

The change of methodology and balancing of our stock have brought us very close to our goal of achieving a 50% reduction of CO2 emissions by 2030 ahead of schedule, but we don’t consider our mission completed. Since 97% of our emissions occur in Scope 3, this is where we focus most of our efforts.

We will continue our work to reduce the climate impact from indirect emissions in our value chain by:

• Increasing the share of EPD products with a smaller environmental footprint in our range.
• Replacing conventional materials with more sustainable alternatives, for example recycled polyester and Lyocell.
• Increasing collaboration with our suppliers and providing support in their transition to renewable energy sources, optimisation of production processes, and reduced energy consumption.
• Further reducing air transports and shifting road transports to High-Capacity Transports.
• Introducing a sustainable service offer to ensure that the garments we produce are used to their full potential and discarded responsibly when they have reached their end of life.

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