GoodGuide and Levi Strauss
GoodGuide co-founder Dara O’Rourke speaks with Levi’s Michael Kobori about GoodGuide’s new apparel category.
Transcript
hi I’m Michael Kobori vice president
of social and environmental
sustainability of levi strauss & company
i’m here with dara aurora the founder
good guy calm and darren has just come
out with some ratings of apparel
companies on their social and
environmental performance Dara tell us a
little bit about good guide in these new
ratings great so good guy has a team of
scientists that rate products for their
environmental social and health
performance we’ve rated over 90,000
products in six categories and we’re
really excited this week to be
announcing our first-ever ratings of
apparel brands of companies and really
try to understand the full environmental
and social impacts of the clothes that
we buy every day as consumers in our
ratings we rated the top 100 brands in
the US Levi’s came out as the number one
ranked blue jeans company so we’re
really pretty interested to see your
leadership on transparency on
environmental and on social performance
well Dara were just thrilled that we
were rated number one as a jeans brand
and I think it is hopefully in
recognition of some of the work that
we’ve done around being more transparent
about where our jeans are made about how
they’re made you know we’ve certainly
made efforts in our new waterless
product to also track the energy and
water use even down to the factory where
the product was made so hopefully the
rating is in recognition of some of
those things no I think our focus on the
full lifecycle impacts of products
matches up with the work that you’ve
been doing inside Levi’s to get that
lifecycle view and what we’re trying to
do is to now empower consumers with a
view into the fold impacts of the
products they buy and to really allow
them to make better decisions over what
types of products and companies they
want to support well that’s what I
believe is so powerful about good guide
in the work you’re doing because it gets
that transparency guess that
impact of the product directly to the
consumer and we believe that our
consumers really care about that they
want to know what is the environmental
impact of a pair of levis and what are
we going to reduce well and that’s how
our hope really is that by empowering
many more consumers with better
information than they’ve ever had before
that really consumers can vote with
their dollars in the marketplace and
people can really find the products and
companies that match their values their
concerns their environmental issues and
so I mean we see the work that you all
are leading on transparency in your
industry as being part of a longer
process I think to make the market more
transparent and to allow really the
market to work more effectively so
consumers can find better products well
really applaud those efforts and
certainly hope that some of the work
that we’re doing around transparency
does encourage and stimulate others to
be transparent as will endow into top of
consumers and to you about their
environment well that’s ultimately
really what we’re going to do is hope
that people engage this information of
the people who want to drill down and
find the water less jeans or the energy
efficient jeans or the different dyes or
the different types of cotton can get
that information and can really begin to
have a conversation with good guide and
with Levi’s on these issues that’s great
thanks so much and if people want to
know more about Luca where do they go so
you can go good guide com or download
our free iPhone app and then walk into
the store and start scanning products
great thanks thank you
